WHAT WE WANT 

AND 

WHERE WE ARE 

W. A.APPLETON 




flass "9 3° 

Book. 

Gqpyiiglitls 10 - 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



WHAT WE WANT 

AND 
WHERE WE ARE 

W. A. APPLETON 



WHAT WE WANT 

AND 

WHERE WE ARE 

FACTS not PHRASES 

<* ->ft* BY 

W, A. APPLETON 

SECRETARY OF THE GENERAL FEDERATION 
OF TRADE UNIONS 

WITH A FOREWORD BY 

SAMUEL GOMPERS 

PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION 
OF LABOR 




NEW ^SdT YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



i^ 9 



vX " A 1 " 



v ^^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAJNT COMPANY 



MAR 29 1322 
A 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©CLA659386 



TO 

GEORGE ROBERTS 

WHOSE SYMPATHY AND KINDNESS HAVE 

SUSTAINED ME DURING TROUBLOUS TIMES 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 



FOREWORD 

By Samuel Gompers 

PRESIDENT OF AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 

Great Britain has no man better fitted to write 
of the achievements and the accomplishments of 
British working people than Mr. William A. Apple- 
ton. Whether the reader finds it possible to agree 
at all times with Mr. Appleton's conclusions is of 
less moment than the fact that the reader will surely 
find Mr. Appleton's writings facts that are impor- 
tant and opinions that are the result of careful 
thought and long experience. 

My own acquaintance with the author of this book 
goes back over a long period of years. As a leading 
trade union official in a position which has brought 
him in touch not only with the workers of his own 
country but with the workers of the world, Mr. 
Appleton has lived and served through a period 
which forms a large and illuminating background for 
his present effort. 

He is not one of those who will, to quote his own 
language, "reiterate frequently exploded platitudes" 
or "rejoice anew over the passing of vain resolu- 
tions." Mr. Appleton is essentially and fundamen- 
tally a trade unionist. He is thoroughly in accord 

vii 



viii FOREWORD 

with the American trade union movement in his atti- 
tude toward the theories, formulas and dogmas of 
the politicians. In matters of trade unionism, Mr. 
Appleton is probably more nearly American than 
any other leading British trade union official. For 
that reason his viewpoint and his analysis will be 
particularly interesting to Americans. They will be 
able to understand him because of this kinship of 
mentality. 

Entirely aside from the general soundness of his 
views and the practical value of his information, 
Mr. Appleton has a claim upon Americans for a 
sympathetic reading of his book which will be appre- 
ciated, at least, among American trade unionists. 

During the war he was one of a group, then all 
too small, who in England and Continental Europe, 
stood against peace by negotiation, but who stood 
for the destruction of militarism and autocracy. I 
make bold here to record one of the declarations I 
made during the war — "I hate war and I would not 
want this war to last one hour longer than necessary 
to attain democratic objectives and yet I would not 
end it one day before those objectives had been per- 
manently achieved." Even though Mr. Appleton 
may not have used the words I employed, yet I know 
that was his position. 

He was uncompromising in his opposition to the 
Stockholm conference project, the danger of which 
at that time was fully appreciated by only a small 
group in our own country but the defeat of which 
was a mighty factor in the conflict then raging. 



FOREWORD is 

Every effort of this character to intrigue the allied 
nations found a strong and unfaltering opponent in 
Mr. Appleton and those who worked with him. 

It is to be hoped that Mr. Appleton will write 
more books. His long experience and his deep 
understanding should be made available to those 
whose opportunities have been fewer but whose 
needs are ever present. 

Samuel Gompers. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

To know the nature and extent of desire and the 
foundations upon which attempts to attain desire 
may be based, should be the aim of all men in all 
communities. Failure on the part of the great 
majority to analyse desire and circumstances and 
possibility, accentuates the outward expressions of 
unrest and facilitates the spread of dangerous propa- 
ganda. The tendency to generalize, apart from 
effective analysis, often involves the endorsement by 
the masses of proposals which, in spite of superficial 
attractiveness, too frequently tend to exhaust na- 
tional strength and national resources. 

The demand for maintenance, irrespective of 
remunerative return; the proposal for levies which 
involved the dissipation of capital and the conse- 
quent limitation of industrial enterprises; the de- 
mand for legislation which continually increases 
bureaucratic control and administrative costs, would 
have secured but few supporters had every proposal 
been stripped of political bias and subterfuge and 
accorded full consideration by a majority of the 
people. 

Broadly speaking, we all think we know what it 
is we want. The term most frequently used to 
express the common desire is "better conditions." 

xi 



xii AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

Here we all agree. Everybody desires better con- 
ditions. Where we part company is in the matter 
of definition and method. 

Obviously, it is not sufficient to know only what 
we want. To achieve real success we must also know 
where we are in respect of bases and possibility. 
Desire that is unattainable should be eliminated if 
mental and moral health is to be maintained. The 
acceptance of this conclusion has led me at all times 
to apply the interrogative method to the problems 
arising out of my work and my associations with 
men. It has been my practice to reduce to writing 
my questions, addressed to myself, and to answer 
them in the light of what knowledge I possessed of 
history and natural law. 

The most convenient form of presenting these 
analyses of the problems which faced me and which 
affected the lives of all with whom I directly or indi- 
rectly came in contact, and which affected also the 
stability of the State, appeared to be that of a book 
containing a series of chapters, each dealing with 
one topic and each aiming at the exposure of fallacy 
and the elucidation of fact. The success of the effort 
will be determined by the extent to which readers of 
the chapters are assisted in deciding within their 
own minds what they really do desire and whether 
the attainment of these desires is possible through 
efforts, or at prices which the individual or the com- 
munity is willing to make or pay. 

The mechanical work connected with the prepara- 
tion of any book involves both time and anxiety. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE xiii 

Most of this mechanical work has been taken off my 
hands, and I desire to express sincerest thanks to 
Dorothy Golding for relieving me of tasks that 
would have taken more time than it would have been 
possible for me to give. 

W. A. Appleton. 
June, IQ2I, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

There is no man in the great Trade Union move- 
ment better equipped for the role of adviser than 
Mr. W. A. Appleton. For many years he has been 
at the head of one of the largest combinations of 
labour in the world and has had unique opportuni- 
ties to view Trade Union conditions in almost every 
part of the globe. It is therefore as much a per- 
formance of a public duty as a private inclination 
that he enters the field of literature to either admon- 
ish or instruct the people to whom he belongs. 

In times of stress we are apt to do strange things, 
and adopt stranger remedies in the sometimes vain 
hope of overcoming our difficulties. The Trade 
Union movement has had its period of stress and 
strange remedies, but its recent afflictions have pro- 
duced a finer crop of quacks than usual, and it is the 
more necessary that this great instrument for human 
betterment and industrial regeneration should begin 
to consult the less showy but more sober of its 
professors. 

Most people will only read those things which 
please; there are, however, a fair number left who 
prefer truth and facts to any number of pleasant, 
attractive theories. This book is written primarily 
for the latter, but even the former will find it to 
their advantage to read it, not once, but twice. 

XV 



xvi INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

We may not agree with all the conclusions with 
entire accord, but a perusal will do a great deal to 
strengthen the faith of those who believe that if it 
can be kept on straight and sensible lines, the Trade 
Union movement cannot be diminished by any tem- 
porary reverses such as have been recently inflicted 
upon it. 

John Ward 
(Lt.-Col.), C.B., C.M.G., J.P., M.R 
Hetman, Don Cossacks, 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I PAGE 

Phrases 19 

CHAPTER II 
The Relations of Labour and Capital 27 

CHAPTER III 
Trade Unionism 44 

CHAPTER IV 
Pertinent Interrogations 57 

CHAPTER V 
Unemployment: Causes and Remedies 68 

CHAPTER VI 
Labour Unrest 87 

CHAPTER VII 
Strikes, Wages and Values 99 

CHAPTER VIII 
Wages and Methods 113 

CHAPTER IX 

jING 121 

CHAPTER X 
Education 129 

CHAPTER XI 
War and Armies 139 

CHAPTER XII 

The Soldier and Labour 147 

xvii 



xviu CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XIII ««" 

Syndicalism 157 

CHAPTER XIV 
Communism in Russia and Britain . ...... 165 

CHAPTER XV 
Co-Partnership . 174 

CHAPTER XVI 
Trade and Taxes . . . ... . ... ... A . .. 185 



WHAT WE WANT 

AND 

WHERE WE ARE 



WHAT WE WANT 
AND WHERE WE ARE 



CHAPTER I 

PHRASES 

THE effect of phrases upon British mentality 
undoubtedly adds point to the query of those 
foreigners who ask whether Britons ever think, and 
if so, whether they ever carry their thoughts to 
logical conclusions. 

Some years ago a great political party came into 
power on the u three acres and a cow" cry. A little 
later, because we were told that our beer would cost 
us more, another political party was driven out of 
power. During the last few years, and especially 
during and immediately after the war, Britain has 
suffered, and continues to suffer, through the national 
tendency to accept the phrase and to follow the 
phrase-maker irrespective of logic or physical possi- 
bility. We might perhaps despair if our American 
friends did not demonstrate their kinship by imi- 
tating that fashion in faith which obsesses us. It is 
comforting to realise that others besides the British 

19 



m WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

surrender to the glamour of the epigram or the 
neatly turned phrase. 

President Wilson's fourteen points were seized 
upon with avidity. They crystallised the subcon- 
scious, and often disconnected, meanderings of men's 
minds, and at once removed, or at least greatly 
reduced, the necessity for independent and definite 
thinking. 

"Secret diplomacy" and "self-determination" 
fastened, limpet-like, upon the public imagination. 
Some of the greatest adepts at secret diplomacy, 
men who practise it daily, men who rejoice in the 
power that it gives them, at once began to declaim 
against it; sometimes because they honestly desired 
to get rid of it, but mostly because they realised that 
declaiming against it distracted observation and left 
them freer to pursue it. Very few of the general 
public stopped to ask whether it was possible, or 
even desirable, to manipulate affairs of State, mat- 
ters of international relationship, programmes of 
trade unions and other equally delicate operations, 
in the light of the publicity accorded by modern 
journalism. It was hastily assumed that secret 
diplomacy was the cause of the war! — abolish secret 
diplomacy, and, as a matter of course, war might be 
expected to be abolished also. 

The wise man, who is not so easily swayed by 
every wind that blows across Areopagus or Rich- 
mond Hill, might shake his head and still cling to 
the idea of the quiet and tentative approach when 
complicated policies had to be discussed, but his 



PHRASES 21 

wisdom was discredited. The masses were for Mr. 
Wilson's way. There was to be no more secret 
diplomacy, and even the transactions of the Supreme 
Council, sitting in inquest upon the world's affairs, 
were to be published, and an era of frank truth was 
to be inaugurated. To-day the wise men do not 
shake their heads. They only smile cynically. 

"Self-determination" was seriously discussed, not 
merely as a new conception, but almost as a divinely 
inspired one. The phrase was grandiloquently dis- 
cussed and supported from a thousand platforms, 
and the vision of each man and each group, each 
nation and each continent, deciding, without let or 
restraint, his or its future, grew until, to some men, 
it appeared like a shining reality. 

Again, the wise men doubted and wondered 
whether it would be possible for every man's rights, 
or every nation's rights, to be governed by the man 
himself or by the nation. They saw the existence of 
conflicting rights, and realised that these could not 
be determined by the individual or the nation, but 
must be regulated by the consent that follows upon 
good will, and by the circumstances which affect peo- 
ples and nations and times. 

It was said that the whole Peace Treaty would 
be based upon this principle of self-determination. 
It is doubtful whether any man who was closely con- 
cerned with the determining or drafting of the Peace 
Treaty believed in his heart then, or will even argue 
to-day, that the principle of self-determination was, 
or could be, undeviatingly adhered to. 



22 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Once up against the facts, the wit of the best and 
the cleverest failed to produce any formula that 
would give effect to the declarations. There has 
not been self-determination. It is doubtful even 
whether there has been a reasonably strict adher- 
ence to the principle of right. As in the past, so now 
and always, might has been used to interpret right, 
and, as a consequence, there are Germans, millions 
of them, handed over to Czecho-Slovakia, and there 
are Hungarians, over a million of them, handed over 
to Rumania; and there are Austrians and Slavs 
handed over to Italy. The attempts to determine 
ethnologically instead of economically, have already 
disturbed industrial conditions in many countries and 
have involved many peoples in needless suffering. 

Perhaps all these things were inevitable, but, if 
they were so, it discredits the phrasemonger, and 
illuminates the folly of those who permit themselves 
to be governed by phrases. 

Nothing, indeed, can have been more embarrass- 
ing to some political groups than the formulae 
adopted in the early days of the war. The anxiety 
to discover partisan battle-cries led them into diffi- 
culties which they cannot easily overcome. 

There was the phrase, "freedom of the seas." 
The seas were free to every nation in the days that 
preceded the war. The ports of Britain were open 
to the ships from every country. The ports of 
every country were only open on terms to the mer- 
chandise of Britain. If those who raise the cry of 
"freedom of the seas" mean that they are prepared 



PHRASES 23 

to fight all those nations that close their ports against 
Great Britain, they are likely to have a busy time. 

Unfortunately, freedom of the seas was differ- 
ently interpreted by German statesmen, for, speak- 
ing in New York in 19 15, Herr Dernberg declared 
that by freedom of the seas he meant that u there 
should be no hostile operations outside the three- 
mile limit." This would have been magnificent for 
Germany, for she would have been able to dispose 
troops anywhere within the radii of the Central 
Empires, while Britain herself would not have been 
able to move troops for the assistance of Belgium 
or France, or even to take them to her own colonies, 
without offering the British friends of Germany 
opportunities for hostile criticism and condemnation. 

Had Britain been pledged to this kind of freedom 
in 1 9 14 she would to-day be enduring the humiliation 
and horror of military defeat by Germany. 

"No annexations, and no indemnities," has formed 
the basis of many speeches on political platforms, 
but what on earth does it really mean? Is it retro- 
spective, present or prospective? Does it apply 
to Alsace-Lorraine, or to Bosnia or Herzegovina? 
Does it mean, in fact, what it states? If it does, 
Germany might be called upon to disgorge what 
she has filched in the way of indemnities from Bel- 
gium, from Serbia, from Russia, from Rumania, and 
from every territory she has invaded. It would 
mean also that she gave up all territory to which she 
has made claim since 1866, and over which she 
sought to exercise political and economic power. 



24 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Did the formulists mean that Germany was to 
disgorge and repay? If she failed to do this, did 
they intend to fight, or would they have been con- 
tent with drafting an expostulatory resolution and 
sending this round to the communist branches for 
adoption? 

By war, and by the threat of war, Germany 
defeated and plundered Austria in 1866 and France 
in 1870, and Denmark in 1884, when she took 
Schleswig-Holstein and gave herself the opportunity 
to construct the Kiel Canal. In 1897, by threat of 
war, she compelled Japan to give up the things 
Japan had secured for herself as the result of mili- 
tary enterprises against China. 

Later on, similar threats compelled France to get 
rid of a popular and able Foreign Minister — 
Monsieur Delcasse. The history of Prussia has 
been an interesting record of war and plunder, and 
it is inconceivable that she should relinquish either 
cash or territory except under military compulsion. 
Germany believed in the survival of the fittest; she 
believed that the fittest were the fighters. She also 
believed that the end justified the means, and a 
peace which might have left her in possession of the 
territories or the money, or the property, or the 
advantages she temporarily secured as the result of 
this war, would have been a victory for her and an 
encouragement to further aggression. 

Our phrasemongers have yet to learn that war 
is a gamble in which the loser pays. Germany has 
been a confirmed and ruthless military malefactor. 



PHRASES 25 

The world, for humanity's sake, had to impose 
deterrent penalties. Unless Germany was made to 
understand that war did not necessarily pay, trouble 
was certain to arise the moment her man-power 
and her resources were restored to the position in 
which she would consider she had again a fighting 
chance. "No annexations and no indemnities" 
meant the shortest road to this — for Germany — 
desirable position. 

In Britain we were told that there was to be a 
"new heaven and a new earth. " With the Briton's 
capacity for generalisation we naturally came to the 
conclusion that Britain was to be the premier and 
outstanding example of what a new heaven and a 
new earth ought to be. Perhaps, of all the phrases, 
none sank so deeply into the hearts of the British 
as this one. To start with, there are many of us who 
believe that already Britain is the best and the most 
beautiful of all lands; that its men are the most 
honest and the most enterprising; that its women 
are the most beautiful and the most faithful. We 
are, consequently, predisposed to accept any theory 
or any contention which places upon our shoulders 
and within our capacity, the duty of introducing the 
millennium. 

Unhappily, those who promised so much gave 
colour to the assumption that all could be achieved 
by legislative action, and they have kept Parliament 
wandering through a maze of measures, all aiming 
at the ideal, but all falling short because men and 



26 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

women failed to understand that the ideal must be 
based upon the practical. 

It was too much to expect that every man and 
woman throughout the United Kingdom would sit 
down seriously and carry their exploration of these 
euphonious phrases to their logical conclusions. It is 
not too much to expect, however, that the men who 
sit in Parliament, together with the men who claim 
to lead communal thought, should themselves essay 
this task; and, after careful analysis and comparison 
with historic similarities, truthfully and honestly set 
forth their conclusions concerning rights and duties 
and possibilities. 

Not until men get away from the folly of deter- 
mining their conduct by phrases; not until they are 
willing to search for the truth as it concerns them- 
selves and their surroundings, will there be any 
possibility of effectively administering the affairs of 
mankind or of securing even an approximation to 
that new heaven and that new earth which have been 
so eloquently pictured and which are so ardently 
desired. 



CHAPTER II 
THE RELATIONS OF LABOUR AND CAPITAL 

NO student of human affairs can regard with 
equanimity the existing trouble between Capi- 
tal and Labour; nor can any student, bearing all the 
facts in mind, regard the present attitude of the 
worker without some measure of understanding and 
sympathy. 

For centuries the owners of capital have, un- 
consciously and consciously, acted upon the tenets 
of what is known as the Manchester school of 
economics. They have applied these tenets to the 
human as well as to the material factors in industry, 
and they can hardly complain if the human, given 
only a limited measure of enlightenment, applies in 
unlimited fashion the tenets of an economic school 
which is diametrically opposed to the Manchester 
one. 

By treating the human factor as they treated the 
material one — by buying labour in the cheapest 
market and selling the produce of that labour in the 
dearest market, and afterwards pocketing the whole 
of the profit — the owners of capital bred in the 
workers an atmosphere of serious hostility to present 
forms of industry. This hostility is accentuated by 
the belief that the owners of capital frequently de- 

27 



28 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

predate the market that supplies human effort, in the 
same way that they depreciate the market which 
supplies other commodities. However untrue it may 
be of modern conditions, and especially post-war 
conditions, this feeling is finding stronger expression 
to-day than in other periods of industrial existence 
of which men have ready cognisance. 

In Britain, for a hundred years, every effort the 
workman made to improve his conditions, his work- 
ing hours, his wages, or the social conditions under 
which he lived, was scouted, ridiculed, or savagely 
repressed. His present resentment is intensified by 
the fact that to-day even the capitalist admits that 
the desire of the workman for better wages and 
conditions was right. The labour politician has 
taught the workman to meet this admission by the 
historical fact that the capitalist has called to his 
aid political resources and national resources in the 
shape of the police and military, in order to prevent 
the workmen from obtaining better conditions. 

In dealing with the modern relations of labour 
to the owners of capital, we have to remember, in 
explanation of some facts and in partial extenuation 
of others, that the owner of capital has mismanip- 
ulated the lives of the workers until their hearts have 
become ready receptacles for the dogma of the 
doctrinaire and the extremist. It is difficult for those 
who have never passed through the fires to realise 
the agony the fires inflict. The men or women whose 
lives have always fallen in pleasant places can hardly 
hope to understand the point of view of the men or 



LABOUR AND CAPITAL 29 

women whose lives, from birth to death, epitomised 
tragedy. The lack of opportunity for the poor 
begins before birth, and continues in most cases 
until death. The expectant mother knows that her 
child will lack some physical or mental quality be- 
cause she has worked too much and eaten too little 
prior to the child's arrival, while the elderly man 
knows that the only way out for him is through the 
Valley of the Shadow. 

Lancashire of to-day suffers from the inhumanities 
perpetrated upon the little children of yesterday; 
not by the mothers and fathers, but by the owners 
of capital who insisted that very young child labour 
was essential to industrial success. 

Just before the war, when the Ulster weavers 
applied for an increase in wages, one of them de- 
clared that he had had eight children, six of whom 
had died because he had been unable, though fully 
employed, to provide them with the food necessary 
to maintain life. To the workman the causes of 
these things are obscure, but the fact of them is more 
certain than that Christ died. 

In Berlin, in June, 19 14, a German socialist, ex- 
tremely clever, high up in the councils of his party, 
and with an international experience, told me that 
if I could live and see Germany after seven genera- 
tions of industrialism, I should discover nothing like 
the physical and mental deterioration that to-day 
affects some of the industrial centres of Great 
Britain. "I am satisfied," he said, "that apart from 
what Social Democracy in Germany may do, the 



30 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

German Government itself will set a higher value 
upon flesh and blood and mind than you appear to 
have set in Britain/' These words were bitter; the 
more bitter because I felt that in the main they were 
justified. 

I have known workmen penalised by boycott for 
six months at a stretch, whose only crime was 
reckoning up the piecework prices of men who were 
themselves incapable of working out the figures. 
Even within the last fifteen years innumerable dis- 
putes have arisen in consequence of the attitude that 
the owner of capital, as represented by the employer, 
has taken towards the worker and the organisations 
which he has built up. Half the industrial disputes 
that took place before the war arose from the 
employers' stupid and short-sighted refusal to dis- 
cuss questions affecting wages and conditions of 
employment with the duly accredited representatives 
of the Trade Unions. It was part of the employers' 
considered policy to undermine the influence of these 
men, to misrepresent their actions, and to encourage 
rebellion against them in the Unions which they 
represented. 

Those who sow the wind must expect to reap the 
whirlwind. 

These references to conditions, it will be said, are 
commonplaces, and are not true of the present day. 
Possibly they are less true, but the suspicion they en- 
gendered is profoundly influencing Labour thoughts 
and attitudes. That is why the commonplaces are 
stated so fully. 



LABOUR AND CAPITAL 31 

They show that the hostility of the workman has 
some justification, and emphasise the difficulties of 
removing the suspicion with which he regards the 
present attitude of even the best of employers. He 
realises that the war has broken down many barriers ; 
that a common intercourse with danger and death 
has stripped employers and workmen of many mis- 
conceptions, and has brought the manhood of each 
into closer communion. He fears, however, that as 
the cause of the change becomes obscured by the 
passing of time, so the effect will diminish, and that 
attempts will more and more be made to reimpose 
the old irresponsible relationships. 

If one says that the cost of the change has been 
too tremendous for the effect to easily diminish, the 
workman asks questions which are barbed with the 
experiences of the past. Centuries have been oc- 
cupied in breeding the distrust which exists, and only 
a gigantic effort on the part of the employer and on 
the part of that other class which neither employs 
nor is employed in the ordinary acceptance of the 
term, can convince the worker that the change of 
heart is real and permanent, and that, henceforth, 
there shall be at least genuine attempts to give to 
each man and to each woman his or her honest dues. 
The new spirit which such a conviction would beget 
would be favourable to a common-sense and gradual 
development of all the relations existing between 
capital and labour. 

A new spirit is necessary, for, while the owner of 
capital is still attached to the spirit of the Manches- 



32 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

ter school, Labour has, rather blindly and without 
analysis, accepted many of the ideas of Karl Marx, 
as interpreted by his latter-day adherents. The 
employer has translated capital into terms of land, 
buildings, machinery and cash. The workman has 
accepted the employer's translation, with the qualifi- 
cation that, as all these things represented natural 
resources upon which Labour had operated, they 
belonged to Labour in the mass rather than to the 
few people who had successfully appropriated them. 

To one who studies rather than dogmatises, both 
sides appear to have missed something; because 
neither side seems to have considered mental or 
spiritual values. 

It is possible to have a superabundance of national 
resources and of labour, as in Russia, and to exploit 
them badly, or not to exploit them at all. Land and 
labour — to use familiar terms and to interpret them 
in the familiar sense — must be of indifferent value, 
apart from intelligent direction and co-ordination. 
If both sides could realise that success in industrial 
operations depended upon the combination of 
materials, mentalities and muscle, it would be 
possible to approach the future with greater degrees 
of confidence. 

In what form will the new spirit, when it arrives, 
manifest itself, and what are the dangers which have 
to be met pending its coming? 

At the moment there are many groups of re- 
formers, and each advocates its own panacea. One 
would place industry and commerce under the control 



LABOUR AND CAPITAL 33 

of Trade Guilds; another proposes to institute a 
system of direct management of industry and com- 
merce by the workers engaged in the workshops; 
another would place all these matters in the hands 
of the State ; a fourth aims only at anarchy, because 
it believes that chaos must inevitably precede order, 
and that the greater the chaos the more perfect the 
resultant system will be. A fifth would leave matters 
in principle as at present, but would insist upon the 
common observance of what may be termed the 
social and industrial humanities. 

Of those who advocate the claims of Trade 
Guilds, it may be said that they build upon a dis- 
credited foundation. The Trade Guild has already 
had its day. It died of super-exclusiveness, and its 
prototype can hardly escape a similar disease. As 
it is the landless man who attacks most virulently 
landowners and landownership, so it was the ex- 
cluded craftsman who attacked and encompassed the 
downfall of the old Trade Guilds. Unless the advo- 
cates of resuscitation can show that the modern 
form of the Guild will include everyone engaged in, 
or attached to, the occupation, history will repeat 
itself. 

What is known as workshop control has many 
advocates, but a departure on these lines can hardly 
be regarded as a course likely to secure the best 
results. This demand is of political rather than 
industrial origin. It involves the immediate and 
non-compensatory appropriation of wealth and 
capital. It assumes a knowledge, not merely of 



34 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

industrial processes, but of commercial enterprise 
and international exchanges. 

I have met some workmen who hold these views. 
They are admirable workmen. They are intelligent, 
and some of them possess extensive knowledge ; but 
I cannot say that I know any advocate of this 
system who is at once an admirable workman, an 
intelligent person, and the possessor of an effective 
knowledge or understanding of the international 
character of trade and who possesses also that ex- 
perience which is necessary to make international 
trade a success. Much of the trouble of those 
who advocate this form of control arises from the 
mistaken notion that trade is mainly an internal and 
national matter; when, as a matter of fact, much of 
the wealth that Britain enjoys, and much of the 
capital she has stored up, has been derived from 
commerce and overseas trade. Into some of this 
trade no British-made goods ever entered. 

Some of the men I know are intelligent enough, 
given time, to deal with these problems in a satisfac- 
tory manner; but events move very rapidly in these 
days, and the country which scraps the methods 
evolved from a thousand years of thinking and 
striving, and elects to depend upon untried processes 
and inexperienced men, will incur very dangerous 
risks. 

Perhaps I fear the State more than I fear the 
inexperienced workman. The latter would suffer as 
a consequence of failure, and might be expected to 
learn by experience. The State would also suffer by 



LABOUR AND CAPITAL 35 

failure, but the individuals responsible for failure 
would mostly escape suffering, continue to draw 
salaries and to qualify for pensions. 

It was Mr. Gladstone who declared that it was 
the State's business to govern and not to trade. State 
interference involves political, as well as industrial, 
disadvantage. It is not merely that State trading 
costs more in cash; in practice it jeopardises more 
than it costs commercially. 

The industrial past has had many unhappy phases. 
There have been bitter conflicts between Capital and 
Labour, but in Britain until recently there have been 
no revolutionary collisions between Labour and the 
State. If the State extends its activities, and does 
more than provide opportunities and hold an even 
balance as between the workers and the owners of 
capital, it increases its disagreements with both, so 
that, instead of strikes, it will become necessary for 
it to face the possibility, and perhaps the fact, of 
revolution. 

Those who glibly advocate State control of enter- 
prise should ponder this fact. Workmen are being 
generally advised to commit the mistake of assuming 
that what the State has done in abnormal circum- 
stances, and on credit, the State can do in normal 
circumstances when credit has to be liquidated by 
cash or goods. 

It is astonishing to find how few people there are 
who realise that what the State was doing during 
the war was merely to purchase, within its own bor- 
ders, articles that had no reproductive value what- 



36 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

ever, and for which it paid a price altogether dis- 
proportionate to the work value involved. In other 
words, the State was purchasing fireworks and pay- 
ing for them with paper — paper which had no value 
outside Britain unless it was backed by that very 
capital which the syndicalist now seeks to dissipate. 
War-time prosperity was indeed fictitious, but the 
average man and woman did not realise this, and so 
was started a chain of ideas concerning post-war 
possibilities that well might, through undue inter- 
ference by the State, ultimately result in revolution 
and the disintegration of that great Commonwealth 
which includes, with Britain, Australia, Canada, 
South Africa and India, and a host of kindred com- 
munities. 

Only the fool desires to produce chaos in the hope 
that order will involve. Anarchy — the elimination 
of law and order and restraint — whether in industry 
or in politics, or in commerce, carries with it dis- 
aster. All nature bows to law and cries out against 
its infraction. Anarchy may be dismissed as a rever- 
sion to the ineffective elemental and as the least use- 
ful of all the theories advanced by the advocates of 
revolutionary change. 

The case against revolution is admirably epito- 
mised in the words of the Management Committee 
of the General Federation of Trade Unions. 

"It is notorious," says the Committee, all repre- 
sentative Trade Unionists, u that some men live only 
to fan the flame of discontent. They have no scru- 
ples. They call themselves revolutionaries, and the 



LABOUR AND CAPITAL 37 

best of them frankly aim at the creation of a social 
state which has ceased to know either inequalities or 
pain. Their mental outlook prevents them seeing 
that disastrous results may follow beneficent inten- 
tions if these intentions ignore economic laws and 
social rights." 

It is argued that revolutions are necessary to 
coerce and displace governments. Unfortunately, 
revolutionary action cannot be confined to the pun- 
ishment of governments. It is the people who give 
blood and suffer material loss; and whatever is lost, 
the people must replace by renewed and greater 
industrial effort. In an Empire constituted as is the 
British Empire, that replacement must be tremen- 
dous, for the trouble cannot be confined to geo- 
graphical or ethnological limits. 

Prior to the war there were already in existence 
groups which aimed at a transformation of the social 
and industrial order. In the main, these groups 
sought to move by evolutionary and constitutional 
means, and they have undoubtedly done much to 
awaken the social conscience. After the war other 
bodies sprang into prominence, and by the specious- 
ness of their early appeals secured the support of 
the less thoughtful. It soon became evident that 
the object of these associations was to assist.the alien 
and the enemy rather than to help their own nation, 
or even to do their best for democracy. 

These associations included ill-educated workers, 
disappointed politicians, men and women of gener- 
ous sympathies and comfortable fortunes, and dilet- 



38 WHAT WE WANT 'AND WHERE WE ARE 

tanti from the universities. They derived whatever 
motive power they possessed from men narrow in 
their outlook, honest perhaps in their convictions, 
but not always happy in their methods. They were 
helped by the vacillations and weakness of those who 
occupied the seats of the mighty without adequately 
filling them. 

As the time grew, lack of success led to these very 
mixed organisations adopting less and less scrupu- 
lous methods, and to-day it is not unfair to say that 
they very freely practise the chicanery they them- 
selves so eloquently denounce. They reason little 
from facts or in the abstract, but concentrate upon 
the abuse of the individual. 

Even to-day the success of their efforts is very 
limited. While men who enjoy piquancy lend an 
ear to their utterances, they give small credence to 
their arguments. It requires more than declamation 
to force off the constitutional path a people whose 
genius is of the evolutionary and constructional type. 
Lack of initial success has led these revolutionaries 
to magnify existing evils and to place every obstacle 
in the way of those who seek to relieve existing diffi- 
culties, or who seek to develop understandings be- 
tween employers and workmen. 

To achieve full success they must prevent any 
arrangements which will leave the responsible parties 
joint opportunities of attacking the problems that 
confront them both. One who is particularly active 
in this separatist work once said: u Oh, yes, the aims 
of those who seek to promote understandings are 



LABOUR AND CAPITAL 39 

admirable for existing society, and for this genera- 
tion of men; but we seek to revolutionise society, and 
are acting for the ultimate, rather than for the 
present." 

It was impossible to convince this man, as it is 
impossible to convince others, that the ultimate 
grows out of the present, and that every step which 
ameliorates the conditions of to-day improves the 
chances of better conditions to-morrow. It is equally 
impossible to make such understand that the wisest 
of us are incapable of foreshadowing the circum- 
stances which will affect the lives of those who live a 
hundred years hence, or the remedies that may be 
necessary for the social diseases which will exist 
amongst our great-grandchildren. "Sufficient unto 
the day is the evil thereof" is not one of their 
slogans. 

The proverb which declares that it is unwise to 
change horses when crossing a stream is full of 
wisdom that might advisedly be applied at the 
present moment. Those who believe this proverb 
can, for the moment, discard the panaceas that in- 
volve revolutionary changes. It seems preferable 
to wrestle with the evils that are, rather than to 
take chances with evils that cannot be apprehended 
or estimated. It may be that some day the present 
social and industrial system will give place to a 
better one; but neither evolution nor revolution 
suggests a possibility of securing perfection in one 
generation. This being the case, it seems both de- 
sirable and profitable that we move from existing 



40 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

conditions step by step, and with due regard for 
these consequences which are possible, though not 
now unforeseeable. 

It may be desirable to bring about catastrophe 
for the sake of propaganda; it may be very altruistic 
and very noble to think only of the future genera- 
tions, but I cannot escape the conclusion that my own 
duty lies with the people who live to-day. 

Believing this, it is inevitable that I should look 
to the improvement of the present system, rather 
than to the institution of some new and untried sys- 
tem, for the social improvements and advantages all 
decent people believe to be necessary. 

The first improvement that one must demand 
from the existing system is the greater stabilisation 
of employment. The most demoralising and ener- 
vating of all fear is that of unemployment and the 
miseries that follow. Many men face hardship with 
equanimity, but no decent man faces idleness without 
terror. It is not merely the reduction of food sup- 
plies, the lack of small luxuries, and the growth of 
debt; it is the development of the spirit of depend- 
ence, and ultimately of the spirit of inefficiency and 
ineffectivity. Those who have had opportunities of 
watching men through long periods of unemploy- 
ment will understand how certainly, and with what 
accelerated ratio, moral and physical inefficiency 
develops. The man who has been out of work a 
week, or even a month, is keen to secure a new berth ; 
but with succeeding months his keenness too fre- 
quently disappears. Misfortune gave me personal 



LABOUR AND CAPITAL 41 

opportunities for self-analysis, and my conclusions in 
this direction are strengthened by other people's 
experiences. 

It is not merely in the interests of individuals that 
employment should be better stabilised. It is in 
the interests of the State, because Labour is, in itself, 
Capital, and to waste labour is to waste national 
resources. Moral as well as economic considerations 
demand that where the conditions of trade are such 
that it is impossible to keep staffs fully employed for 
the normal day, arrangements should be made, 
wherever possible, to reduce the hours of employ- 
ment instead of reducing the number of employees. 
There should be, trade union regulations notwith- 
standing, improved facilities for the interchange of 
labour between one industry and another. It is 
inevitable, if unpleasant, that reduced production 
should involve lower standards of living. Only the 
disingenuous politician would dispute a fact so 
obvious. 

The next thing to demand is a wage that will 
represent fair payment for the effort made and a 
fair share of the results achieved. The effects 
of deviation from fairness, either by employer or 
employee, disastrously disturb both relationships and 
trade. It is impracticable to lay down a law, univer- 
sally applicable, that wages shall always be equal to 
food prices. That would be fixing wages without 
regard to the value of the article produced. But 
wages should be fixed so that, at the worst, they 
would afford maintenance, and at other times not 



42 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

merely maintenance, but comfort and a promise of 
ultimate safety to those who practise thrift. To 
secure this, both employer and employed must be 
prepared to consider such adjustments of wages, 
both up and down, as may be necessary for the ulti- 
mate safety and prosperity of industry. 

The maximum value can never be obtained from 
labour, nor can the maximum benefit accrue to 
labour, while there remain any restrictions on the 
use of machinery and the exercise of reasonable 
effort and intelligence. The advocates of "ca* canny" 
overlook the fact that u ca' canny" increases the cost 
of production, and enhances the price to the con- 
sumer who, in 95 per cent, of cases, is some fellow- 
workman or workwoman. "Ca' canny" is the least 
successful way of remedying social and industrial 
evils. 

Homes, rather than institutes, are needed if life 
is to be enjoyed, and if the State is to be an 
organisation which men will love and for which 
they will fight, capital must concern itself with the 
provision of homes. If it does this it will be able 
to reduce its contributions to institutions. One tires 
of the nostrums offered to mothers, to invalids, to 
the broken in the wars, to the feeble in health, 
because one knows that most of these would be 
unnecessary if the homes of the people were 
improved. I shudder when I hear of the efforts 
made to establish creches and compare them with 
the efforts made to establish homes in which parents 
and children might enjoy the richest of pleasures — 



LABOUR AND CAPITAL 43 

that of each other's company and loving collabora- 
tion. I never forget the dictum of the famous sur- 
geon who declared that the best hospital was the 
home, and the best nurse the wife or mother. 

The owners of capital and the workers both 
agree, in principle, on all these points. It should 
not be too much to ask that they should join in 
mutual efforts to put these principles into practice; 
and that they should go even further, and set up 
mutual arrangements for the discussion of all differ- 
ences that arise between them, and for the preven- 
tion of strikes about small and unimportant things. 

I do not w 7 ish to eliminate the right to strike. 
That right is a national safeguard, and anyone who 
seeks to suppress it is an enemy of the State; but 
I do want to see all points of difference discussed 
intelligently between the people who are really 
concerned; that is, between the employers and the 
workmen — the word workmen including, in this 
connection, the duly accredited representatives of the 
workmen. 

It is for this reason that I have always advocated 
the provision of voluntary machinery for the dis- 
cussion of difficulties and the prevention of disputes. 
Sympathy and intelligence can solve most of the 
industrial difficulties with which we are beset, pro- 
vided these qualities are exercised equally by 
employers and Trade Unionists of experience and 
responsibility. 



CHAPTER III 

J TRADE UNIONISM 

TRADE UNIONISM— the organisation for the 
betterment of wages, hours and working con- 
ditions, of persons engaged on similar materials, 
using similar tools or machines, and producing simi- 
lar results or commodities — arose out of the miseries 
that men and women endured in the latter part of the 
eighteenth and the earlier part of the nineteenth 
century. It ceased to be unlawful in 1824, but its 
adherents were grievously, and illegally, punished 
for a considerable time after this date. Usually, as 
was the case with the labourers of Tolpuddle in 
Dorsetshire, old Statutes were resuscitated and 
desperately strained in order to prevent the growth 
of a movement which was regarded with the gravest 
apprehension both by employers and politicians. 
Savage indeed were some of the sentences passed 
upon men whose only offence was trying to secure 
such wages as would meet the primitive needs of 
the times. The sentence of seven years penal servi- 
tude passed upon the Dorsetshire labourers, a 
sentence which was publicly approved by Lord 
Melbourne, instead of destroying the movement 
advertised it, and laid the foundations for Trade 
Unionism as it was known twenty years ago. 

44 



TRADE UNIONISM 45 

This movement was in no sense revolutionary. 
None of the organisations then created denied the 
rights of property, neither did they assail the con- 
stitution, nor belittle their own country. Most of 
the leaders in those days were men of strong per- 
sonality and great courage. They also understood 
the delicacy of the industrial machine, and they fully 
appreciated the folly of destroying confidence and 
balance. Critics have said of them that sometimes 
they were more than patient, and that they too often 
permitted the continuance of conditions which were 
inimical to the workers, and which ought to have 
been swept out of existence. In judging them, it is 
necessary always to remember their numerical weak- 
ness, the strength opposed to them, and to remember 
also that they were far more concerned with the ulti- 
mate benefit of the industry they were engaged in 
than are the men of to-day, who only see industry 
through political spectacles. 

In the old days, there was little love of the strike 
for the strike's own sake; the existing forms of the 
lightning strike and the synchronised strike were 
unknown. If they had been proposed, they would 
most likely have been condemned as impracticable 
and as involving troubles greater than those they 
proposed to remedy. Fair notice and joint negotia- 
tion were invariably attempted, and industrial peace 
was the object. 

This mental attitude, even in 1900, is exemplified 
in the rules of the General Federation of Trade 



46 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Unions. In the very first rule, it is stated to be one 
of the objects of the Federation: — 

"To promote Industrial Peace and by all 
amicable means such as Conciliation, Mediation, 
References, or by the establishment of Permanent 
Boards, to prevent Strikes or Lockouts between 
Employers and Workmen, or disputes between 
Trades or Organisations. Where differences do 
occur, to assist in their settlement by just and 
equitable methods. " 

These rules were adopted after a series of repre- 
sentative conferences, after the keenest discussion, 
and after the best minds of the Trade Union move- 
ment had spent months in elaborating what they 
believed to be the best basis for a general federation 
of all Trade Unions. It is interesting to remember 
that these rules received the endorsement of the 
Trades Union Congress, and that no one has yet 
suggested that there should be any alteration in the 
principle. 

There is no escaping the desire of these pioneers 
of the movement to maintain stable trade relation- 
ships. At that time, there was no questioning of the 
workman's duty to earn the value of the wages he 
received. "A fair day's wages and a fair day's 
work" was the current aphorism. Men certainly 
hoped for better things, but they never hoped to 
obtain high wages and a high standard of living 
without a commensurately high standard of produc- 
tion. These were the days when men were trained 
to trades ; when they were proud alike of their skill 



TRADE UNIONISM 47 

and of their capacity to produce. Then, they 
created for themselves opportunities for rational 
advancement. Now, the tendency is to wait, with 
some indifference, for opportunities to be created. 

Had the employing classes of those days been as 
wise and as conciliatory as the workmen, the present 
confused, embittered, and dangerous situation might 
never have arisen. Unhappily, there was always 
hostility towards the trade unionist, and, from the 
beginning of the nineteenth century to fairly recent 
times, the men who accepted offices in the Trade 
Unions were, in many ways, penalised by the 
employers. In consequence of this, the steadier 
fellows, or those with dependents, very often evaded 
official responsibility. The various offices thus 
became the easy prey of men who held extreme views 
and who were always ready to accept opportunities 
of pushing them. 

It is common, amongst men of a certain type, to 
belittle those older Unions and to sneer at the 
results they achieved. It is always advisable, how- 
ever, to consider circumstances the moment one 
endeavours to measure results, and what is of equal 
importance is the necessity for endeavouring to 
measure the real value and permanency of results. 
If this is done, it will be seen that great indeed were 
the accomplishments of the men who believed that 
honourable adherence to contracts and intelligent 
promotion of industrial peace were consistent with 
the development of reasonable conditions. These 
older leaders secured the right to combine; they 



48 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

secured, by constitutional means, and with the aid 
of public opinion, the repeal of wickedly obnoxious 
laws, and they secured also the right to strike, even 
though they expressed a preference for more sensible 
methods of settling disputes. 

There ought to be no questioning the workman's 
right to strike — to withhold his labour, either indi- 
vidually or collectively, when the conditions become 
too bad, the hours too long, or the wages too low. 
The abrogation of this right involves slavery. It is, 
however, necessary to differentiate between the strike 
against industrial oppression and the strike against 
the community. 

The strikes of the last century involved the work- 
ers in misery and the capitalists in loss. They 
prejudiced trade by limiting output, but they often 
helped industry and commerce by forcing the use 
of machinery. By arresting production, they preju- 
diced fortunes, but they did not seriously imperil the 
State. That very many of them were justified is 
beyond question. If a record of all the strikes had 
been kept, together with one of causes and conse- 
quences, an impartial jury of to-day, selected from 
any class, would agree that in the circumstances of 
the times, the strike was often the only means of 
redressing the grievances in any given industry. 
Many strikes of recent years have been based upon 
different conceptions, and have aimed at achieving 
entirely different objectives. 

Just as law crept in to regulate the relations o£ 
men in society, so the old trade unionism crept in 



TRADE UNIONISM 49 

to safeguard the hours of labour and the rewards 
of those who laboured. When reasoning failed, 
strikes sometimes followed, but only when reasoning 
failed. The old strikes were undertaken for the 
purpose of compelling capitalists to behave decently. 
The new strikes are, too often, undertaken for the 
purpose of destroying the capitalist form of indus- 
try, or of forcing upon a democratically elected gov- 
ernment the will of a revolutionary minority. The 
future of industry and commerce receives little con- 
sideration from the extremist who engineers politi- 
cal strikes, because he assumes that, in the future, 
there will be no industries and no commerce as we 
know these things. For him, therefore, there is no 
need to take any care, or to maintain any sort of 
trade balance. 

The immediate effects of these new conceptions 
vary. A general strike on the railways or in the 
building trades does not hurt the workers in these 
trades or their employers quite so much or so directly 
as similar action hurts the textile or engineering 
trades, or that section of the transport workers 
concerned in overseas trade, or even the miners who 
are engaged in mining coal for export trade. The 
first two can, and do, pass on the cost of changed 
conditions to the rest of their own people. Whether 
the cost of dislocations or advances are met by sub- 
sidies or increased fares, or increased rents, matters 
little; whatever the media, it is, in fact, their fellow 
workers of their own nationality, engaged in other 



SO WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

occupations, who actually carry the burdens the non- 
exporting sections impose. 

The work of these sections is performed in their 
own country, and is unaffected by foreign compe- 
tition. The other trades must sell a very large pro- 
portion of all their production in other countries, 
and to people whose self-interest is greater than 
their altruism. Anything, therefore, which increases 
prices, reduces quality, and involves delay in delivery, 
reacts injuriously and dangerously. It is these reac- 
tions, much more than capitalism or over-production, 
which dislocate industry and precipitate unemploy- 
ment. 

The revolutionary politicians who, for the last 
fifteen years, have secured increasing ascendancy 
over Trade Unions and their policy, have no reason 
to concern themselves with Trade Unions, except as 
media of cash, power and advertisement. To them, 
Trade Unions offer the means of achieving political 
advancement. If these could be cut out of the Trade 
Union movement altogether; if Tory, Liberal, 
Socialist, Communist, and all the other brands could 
be relegated to their proper sphere, the real Trade 
Unionist might settle down to the study of the prin- 
ciples which underlie and govern trade, and through 
trade, employment. Then confidence might return 
and industry begin to acquire stability. 

Let there be no mistake concerning my atti- 
tude towards the Parliamentary representation of 
Labour. If Parliamentary idealists aim at securing 
an aggregation representative of interests, rather 



TRADE UNIONISM 51 

than an assembly charged with the furtherance of 
the general good, then the presence of Labour is an 
absolute necessity. But it is equally necessary to 
keep the Trade Union and the political movements 
distinct and autonomous. The two movements have 
some things in common, but they progress by differ- 
ent routes and approach problems of grave impor- 
tance from entirely different points of view. It 
would be stupid to disregard the possibilities that 
arise from collaboration, but it would be equally 
stupid to ignore the fundamental differences that 
exist, or for either to seek to absorb the other. 
Further than this, a political Labour Party may feel 
justification for subordinating national interests to 
international ones, but the Trade Union movement 
might consider itself unable to experiment in altru- 
isms of this kind. 

Preferring strike to revolution, and being anxious 
that the Government should incur no responsibility 
for revolution by interfering unduly in the differ- 
ences that arise between employers and employed, 
I am naturally anxious to secure the best form of 
organisation for promoting and conducting strikes 
where these become necessary. Such an organisation 
should be capable, too, of preventing strikes, because 
it is intelligent enough to anticipate events, and 
powerful enough to negotiate on equal terms with 
any employer or association of employers. 

Two forms of Trade Unionism find adherents 
in this country; the industrial, and the craft. 
Industrial unionism makes place of occupation the 



52 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

basis of organisation rather than character of occu- 
pation. In other words, it is where a man works, 
and not what he does, that is to determine his union, 
if industrial unionism dominates. Craft unionism, 
on the other hand, follows tradition, and aims at 
binding together all who, by similar means, produce 
similar results. 

In deciding which form of organisation is best, 
it is necessary to have regard to the psychological 
characteristics of the people, and to the standards 
of skill and intelligence which obtain in the areas 
the organisation is to cover. In Britain, where the 
people are inherently individualists, and where the 
standard of skill and intelligence is high, where also 
the desire for autonomous self-government amounts 
almost to passion, the craft union offers that form 
of organisation most likely to succeed, and it is in 
the craft union and its logical development that one 
expects to find the machine most suitable for the 
workman's industrial needs. 

It is difficult to imagine any real or ultimate 
benefit resulting from any industrial system which 
compels craftsmen of various kinds to bury their 
craft individuality. Craft organisation at once 
promotes pride in skill and capacity, and involves 
sympathy and the sense of mutuality amongst the 
men who are performing the same kind of work. 
The craft union elects men to its executive who 
understand the nature and the possibilities of the 
businesses they have to deal with, and who are 
usually capable of negotiating technical agreements 



TRADE UNIONISM 53 

with individual employers or employers' associations. 

It would be foolish to suggest that the craft union 
has reached its highest form of development. With 
the increasing modifications in methods of produc- 
tion, and the consequent approximation of skills, it 
is necessary that the craft unions should take their 
position into serious consideration, and evolve, as 
a basic contribution for strike and lock-out purposes, 
a business-like system of transfers, where men pass 
from one phase of industry to another, and an intelli- 
gent method of amalgamation where the conditions 
in related trades make amalgamation possible. If 
this programme were carried out it would result in 
a smaller number of unions in related trades, but 
the full benefit would not follow unless these unions 
or amalgamations of unions were themselves cen- 
trally federated. The federation to which the 
unions could affiliate should be representative of all 
unions, and should possess departments for educa- 
tional work, for information and for finance. It 
should also concern itself with the study of industrial 
diseases, and the collation of statistics concerning 
trade, health, unemployment, and mortality. 

The Trade Union of the future ought to have at 
its service officials who possess a scientific rather 
than a dogmatic knowledge of industrial economics, 
commercial geography, and international exchange. 
They must have sources of information which the 
ordinary Trade Union member will regard as 
untainted and which will enable them to strike or 
wait — whichever is the wiser policy. 



54 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

The ordinary principles of insurance must be 
adopted by the Trade Union movement if it is to 
achieve the maximum of success. The present hap- 
hazard method of fixing contributions and benefits 
without regard to their actuarial relationship must 
be discarded. 

All these things the Trade Union can do and have 
without merging its identity in organisations differ- 
ently constituted and having different objectives, and 
without sacrificing its autonomy. 

Here lies the great, the immediate, task of the 
Trade Unionist — the consolidation of the real 
Trade Union movement. Let it decline groupings 
which jeopardise its existence and places its members 
and its funds under the control and at the service 
of men who are not in it, and whose aims are for- 
eign to it. 

/ To-day it is servant where it ought to be master. 
Its rehabilitation and its salvation lie in freedom 
from control by other organisations, in the use of 
its funds for industrial instead of political purposes, 
in the logical development of the craft ideal, in the 
amalgamation of all similar trades, and in the fed- 
eration of all amalgamations. 

The fight to recover freedom will be bitter, for 
those who have invaded the movement will not 
easily be driven out. If, however, the straight men 
who are Trade Unionists first and politicians after- 
wards, will put their hearts into the work, success is 
assured. A mass of steady, if undemonstrative, 
support is sure to come from people whose conduct 



TRADE UNIONISM 55 

in recent crises has shown how great is the desire 
for constitutional effort and development. The peo- 
ple are awakening, and as they understand them- 
selves and more clearly understand the facts that 
govern trade and employment, they will demand a 
form of organisation which cares more for trade 
conservation than trade destruction. 

The growth of Trade Unions has been extraor- 
dinary. To-day there are more members of the 
union than the country had inhabitants in 1750. 
Not all who enroll apprehend or approve the prin- 
ciples of Trade Unionism. Many are members 
because they are compelled to be. They may be 
expected to go out as lightly as they came in. The 
spell of industrial adversity which appears to be 
inevitable will try them and find many wanting. 
How serious the defection may be depends upon the 
period and the extent of the industrial stagnation 
which exists. 

I, for one, do not for one moment imagine that 
these defections will destroy Trade Unionism, but 
I do expect them to compel reform and a return to 
the principles upon which the movement was origi- 
nally founded, 

Reformed Trade Unionism will, I believe, readily 
accept the statement that the whole is greater than 
the part; that the interests of all the people must 
come before the interests of any group or section. 
It will discountenance strikes which elevate any one 
section or trade or any particular occupation at the 
expense of others, and its officials will read trade 



56 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

barometers more skilfully than the bureaucrats of 
Whitehall. 

Enlightened by its experiences, it will base its 
future enterprises upon the certain knowledge that 
Trade Unionism is subsidiary to trade, and that 
those who needlessly interfere with the steady opera- 
tion and development of trade are the worst enemies 
of the Trade Unionist. The movement may be 
expected to bury the Red Flag, and resuscitate the 
old formula of "neither religion nor politics." It 
will enlarge its outlook until this involves considera- 
tion of the whole community, and it will, if it realises 
the hopes of its well-wishers, come back, after the 
suffering and loss and disillusionment of these latter 
days, to that conception of Trade Unionism set forth 
in the first rule of the General Federation of Trade 
Unions. 



CHAPTER IV 
PERTINENT INTERROGATIONS 

OUGHT Trade Unions to support strikes when 
strikes have, as a political objective, the 
subversion of existing forms of Government? 

In such strikes, ought all Trade Unions to support 
the section selected for the political experiment, or 
should they think the matter out and do what seems 
right in the interest of the whole people ? 

Can class be defined or delimitated, and is class 
more important than the common well-being? 

Can Trade Unions survive a political cataclysm, 
and, even if they can, are they of more actual impor- 
tance than the whole country? 

Should Trade Unions remain silent and inactive 
when they believe that vital and world-reaching 
mistakes are being made ? 

Does class loyalty involve quiet acquiescence in 
class suicide? Can democracy be constructive or 
maintain authority? 

These are some of the questions to be answered 
by organised Trade Unionism during the next few 
years, if the tendencies of Trade Unions are to be 
defined and "unified. 

If political change of the kind adumbrated by 
the men who formed the Soviet Council at Leeds in 

57 



58 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

19 17, and advocated in unqualified terms by their 
disciples, is really desirable and necessary, would 
it not be better to take a plebiscite of the whole of 
the people than to permit a minority to force events ? 
In the present state of the franchise it should be 
possible, with little trouble and a comparatively 
small cost, to obtain a decision, say, on the following 
question : 

Are you prepared to supersede the existing 
form of democratic Government, and replace it 
by a Government consisting of an autocracy, either 
self-appointed or appointed by any one section of 
those who compose the nation? 

Whichever way the answer went, I, for one, 
should be prepared to accept the decision; only 
reserving to myself the right to seek some other 
country if this country decided against the continu- 
ance of democratic institutions. Is it conceivable, 
however, that the majority of Trade Unionists can 
think of supporting action which, having political 
objectives, must lead to revolution? 

There is no doubt as to the intentions of some 
men. They have too little reflective capacity or 
discretion to keep their intentions from the public 
view; and they have talked of revolution with no 
more sense of responsibility than would be required 
if they were considering the disposal of a rotten sack 
of potatoes. They glibly repeat the phrases bor- 
rowed from other times and other men, and resent 
the suggestion that revolution which aims at over- 



PERTINENT INTERROGATIONS 59 

throwing existing forms of society and systems of 
Government must involve bloodshed. They will not 
believe that the exceptions to this rule are insignifi- 
cant, and do not affect the main conclusion, or that 
history emphatically emphasises the puerility of 
those who advocate revolutions and say they do not 
want bloodshed. These revolutionaries know — or 
they ought to know — that the moment constitutional 
methods are superseded by forceful assumptions of 
new national authority, and by forceful appropria- 
tions of property, bloodshed becomes inevitable. 

There are, from my own point of view, circum- 
stances in which it might be not only permissible, 
but obligatory, to use all means of achieving a politi- 
cal objective. 

If a king, or a proletarian assumed autocratic 
authority over the lives, the morals, and the wealth 
of a State, and exercised his authority for oppression 
or his own sole pleasure, no man of courage would 
hesitate over revolution. But, and the but is an 
important one, if revolution aimed at replacing 
social and political democracy by personal or class 
autocracy, the favourable interposition of the Trade 
Union movement would be an act of madness. 

Britain already enjoys social and political democ- 
racy, and she has made some expensive experiments 
in State democracy. There is nothing that can so 
surely prevent the continuance of those experiments 
as a revolution involving bloodshed and a violent 
change of masters. 

Change is necessary. All life is an illustrative 



60 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

example of change; but in politics and in an 
enlightened community, change should come by 
consent, and not by force. Those who suggest 
change by violence may aim blows at the Govern- 
ment, but the blows will surely fall upon the people. 
It would be better if we adopted the simple expe- 
dient of bringing from Russia all those who are tired 
of revolution, and sending to Russia all those who 
want to experiment in revolution. By this means 
we might make all the discontents contented. 

In strikes having a political objective, should all 
Trade Unionists jeopardise their industry to support 
the experimenting section? The answer to this ques- 
tion seems to lie in that abused platform platitude : 
"The greatest good for the greatest number." 

If this answer is given, one may expect the ex- 
tremist to say that he is concerned only with the 
ultimate good of the greatest number, and prefers 
to achieve this by force instead of reason. But none 
of us can determine the ultimate good or bad. We 
can only take such steps as fit our own times, and 
trust to Providence and the intelligence of our chil- 
dren and our children's children for the ultimate 
good. Trade Unions might survive political cata- 
clysm — such, for instance, as a general strike — but 
not qua Trade Unions. What they might become 
after such an event is suggested by the standing they 
have enjoyed under the Soviets in Russia. 

Can class be defined or delimitated? In some 
countries it might be possible to indicate lines of 
demarcation between classes; but in this country 



PERTINENT INTERROGATIONS 61 

they are so diffuse, and the possibilities of transition 
are so great, that lines drawn to-day would be useless 
to-morrow. There is the danger, too, that any 
attempt artificially to separate class from class, 
would destroy initiative and invite social disaster. 
Many profound lessons are taught by the common 
things of life, and even a superficial study of natural 
law will give pause to those who wish, by violence, 
to reach arbitrary demarcations of class. For my- 
self, I only know two classes. The class that tries 
to do things for itself, and the class that suffers 
things to be done for it. 

Ought Trade Unionists to keep silence when 
they believe that mistakes are being made, or that 
their movement is being used, not for the benefit 
of their members, but in order to advance the aims 
of political dreamers and schemers? 

Every man must have this out with his own con- 
science; but the majority, and especially those who 
have been frequently involved in expensive and inef- 
fective strikes, will decide without hesitation that 
they ought to speak out. 

The British workers, as a class, are orderly in 
character and action; and if they follow their tra- 
ditions and convictions and finer inspirations, they 
will steer wide of the revolutionaries who have, and 
will, endanger their happiness and prosperity. 
Already the wild men have increased the cost of 
living. In those countries from which we buy our 
main stocks of raw materials and food, the exchange 
rates are against us; Consols are well below 50; and 



62 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

some War Loan Stocks are far below par. Every 
further outbreak of the irresponsible extremists dis- 
turbs industry and accentuates this situation, and 
reduces the value of the poor man's savings and 
wages. 

The Trade Unionist, therefore, has the impera- 
tive duty of speaking out and protesting against 
those who will only make social and industrial 
experiments in the most expensive way. 

That the political Labour Party will endeavour 
to displace the other parties and constitute a Gov- 
ernment on its own lines, is now certain. The 
Labour Party has said so; and society, in faith, or 
malice, or hopefulness or hopelessness, has accepted 
the Party's dictum. 

If and when it comes into power, will the Labour 
Party 7 succeed in making trade better or man hap- 
pier? There's the rub. It will start with a very 
heavy handicap. It has sown a crop of promises, 
and it cannot escape the harvest. The economic 
fantasies advocated by various of its groups have 
appealed to the unthinking as a fairy tale appeals to 
a child, and there will be terrible disappointment if 
the promised employment fails to materialise, or 
the money to pay unemployment benefit cannot be 
extracted from an over-taxed and debt-embarrassed 
country. 

Levies on capital are, or were, easy and attractive 
subjects to talk about. They appear to offer such 
simple and efficacious means of meeting financial 
liabilities. To-day, not so much is said on this sub- 



PERTINENT INTERROGATIONS 63 

ject. Its discussion has shown, not only the diffi- 
culties of preparing and giving effect to any scheme, 
but has emphasised the fact that to unduly tax capi- 
tal is to dissipate it, either by forcing it to find sanc- 
tuary in other countries, or to encourage wasteful 
spending in order to dodge taxation. 

Even those who were originally enamoured of this 
way of meeting indebtedness are now beginning to 
see that it is better for man to earn his own living 
than to poach on the savings of his neighbour or his 
grandfather. 

Apart from, but in addition to, the financial lia- 
bilities and social expectations which will await it, 
a Labour Government would be faced with problems 
to which, as a Party, it has given little attention. 
It will have to govern an Empire, even though within 
its ranks imperialism has been anathema. The 
Dominions, India, and Ireland cannot be dismissed 
by the utterance of a phrase or the passing of a reso- 
lution. Their interests are interwoven with, and for 
the time being dependent upon, those of Great 
Britain. The consideration of these interests will 
call for the exercise of capabilities not yet mani- 
fested by the Labour Party. Mistakes will bring 
swift punishment from those who have been led to 
expect too much. 

To maintain good relationships with old friends, 
whilst essaying to heal the wounds of recent enemies, 
will require statesmanship of the highest order. 

Wrapped up with this question of Empire govern 
nance is the problem of the Navy and Army. Th& 



64 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

attitude a Labour Government would adopt towards 
the twin services can hardly be guessed, because, 
hitherto, while there has been considerable exploita- 
tion of Navy and Army circumstances, there has 
been no definite programme put forth for the con- 
stitution and maintenance of either force. Yet there 
is a point below which even a Labour Government 
dare not carry its negligence of national and imperial 
defence. Perhaps one is justified in assuming that 
because the majority of those who form the Labour 
Party are Socialists, they will, in order to cut the 
cost of the Navy and Army, admit and enforce 
universal liability to Naval and Military service, and 
that this liability will be supplemented by a com- 
pulsory form of training sufficient to maintain neces- 
sary efficiency. 

What of Democracy? Democracy in society 
makes for millenniums; but democracy in govern- 
ment may easily make for decadence of authority. 
Democracy can destroy, but history suggests that it 
cannot construct, except in circumstances where the 
issues are confined and simple. In Britain, democ- 
racy in government shows signs of failure. The 
return of autocracy is threatened; whether it be an 
autocracy of intelligence or one of ignorance, 
remains to be seen. 

The decadence of authority begins in the homes, 
goes through the schools, and dangerously affects 
the State. The signs have long been obvious to those 
who viewed the situation without political prejudice, 
or the possibilities of political preference. Warn- 



PERTINENT INTERROGATIONS 65 

ings to the Government have been frequent, but they 
have fallen on the deaf ears of Ministers who were 
busy with their own immediate affairs, or who were 
under the directing control of their own Depart- 
mental Chiefs, or who, having forgotten the lessons 
of history taught in their universities, have failed 
to learn those of the times in which they live. 

Government, as science and art, plus inspiration, 
has long been decaying. Not what was right, but 
what was expedient, has become the object of the 
politician, who masqueraded in the garb of states- 
manship. No man defended the right unless it was 
politically safe to do so. Ultimate results have been 
sacrificed to immediate advertisement. Those who, 
in one session of Parliament, have raved against the 
giving of doles, have, in the next session, out-doled 
the dolists. No man occupying or usurping the seat 
of a Statesman has dared to say to the people that 
unless they work they must starve; or if they use 
force to destroy equilibriums, force will be used to 
destroy them. 

Successive Governments have endured the licen- 
tiousness of the minority and allowed the majority 
to be terrorised and impoverished. Occasionally 
there has been a pretence of punishment of particu- 
larly flagrant offences against law and order, or when 
one or two revolutionaries have viciously arrested 
national productivity; but not one of the punish- 
ments inflicted has been equal in severity to a week's 
service in the trenches. The criminal with antU 



66 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

social tendencies has had a much more "cushy" time 
than the duty-loving patriotic soldier. 

Parliament, as a whole, has too many members 
and too little capacity. Six hundred members of 
both houses would be more likely to recover control 
than thirteen hundred and fifty. The situation, 
unfortunately, cannot wait upon Parliamentary re- 
form; each day increases both the danger and the 
difficulty. Action must be definite and clear, and its 
aim must be to arrest the diseases which threaten 
to destroy Britain. Disobedience to the law of the 
land, and to the law which is over the land, must be 
definitely and swiftly dealt with. The means 
adopted will be approved, or condoned, or con- 
demned in the light of results. 

It should be the immediate policy of all parties 
to rid the Government of excrescences that hamper 
and endanger. Over and over again has the Govern- 
ment been warned of the danger of interfering with 
matters outside their sphere; time after time has it 
been pointed out that such interference might pre- 
vent some strikes, but only at the ultimate cost of 
revolution. Neither Governments nor Parliaments 
can override economic law, and the attempt to do so 
has brought revolution very near to us. Get back, 
or perhaps forward, to sane conceptions; let capital 
and labour settle their differences between them- 
selves, and let the State content itself by keeping the 
ring, interfering legislatively only when life and 
health and material are in danger. 

The strikes of to-day are not against capital, they 



PERTINENT INTERROGATIONS 67 

are against society — society as represented by the 
hundreds of thousands of girls and women who 
tramp to work through the snow and slush because 
a few motormen misunderstand or desire to repu- 
diate a contract, or a few railwaymen are dis- 
gruntled. Some strikers realise the baleful effects 
their actions must have on the community and on 
trade, but their faith in authority's power to protect 
them has weakened, and they drift to the side of the 
revolutionary. 

The task of recovery will be great. During the 
last fifteen years, many thousands of officials have 
been created; these all struggle for the expansion 
of their Departments and the enlargement of their 
functions. Many call themselves Socialists, but they 
are promoting and assisting anti-social develop- 
ments. 

Is there a man strong enough to tackle the job? 
Strong enough to tell the people the truth and to 
meet force by force if needs be ? Upon the answer 
to this question depends the future of Britain and 
the fate of the British Empire. The majority are 
waiting for the man, and will follow him almost 
blindly. 



CHAPTER V 

UNEMPLOYMENT: CAUSES AND REMEDIES 

AMONGST the millions who are to-day unem- 
ployed are hundreds of thousands who fought 
for the political life of Britain and for the safety 
of the people who were fortunate enough to remain 
at home. The tragedy behind this crowd, which is 
at once landless and workless, must move to sympa- 
thy every man and woman in Britain. It ought to 
do more — very much more. It ought to move the 
whole people to the instant and scientific study of 
causes and remedies as well as to the application 
of palliatives. 

The situation has not developed without warning. 
The signs of its coming were as flaming as, and much 
more threatening than, the Northern Lights. It 
needed neither especial sagacity nor profound knowl- 
edge to see that collapse must follow the crisis and 
the political madness which, initiated in 191 8, en- 
couraged false hopes and condoned unjustifiable 
extravagance. 

As far back as March 2nd, 19 19, I wrote: 

"Industry cannot be operated successfully if 
the wages paid exceed the value of the articles 

68 



UNEMPLOYMENT 69 

produced. In such circumstances, industry ceases 
to be profitable and can only be carried on by the 
depletion of reserves and with the certainty of 
bankruptcy. 

"It was the same with Housing. Subsidies 
seemed so easy and so natural to speakers 
upon whom it never dawned that new houses 
would be subsidised at the expense of the old 
ones, or that the better paid artisan would, by 
appropriating the new houses, increase the bur- 
dens of the very poor. Houses were needed, but 
it was not necessary to obscure or disregard the 
incidence of cost. 

"What applies to uneconomic wages and hous- 
ing schemes applies with even greater force to 
so-called non-contributory schemes of unemploy- 
ment benefit. All costs falls ultimately not upon 
dividends, nor upon hoarded wealth, but upon 
the recreative capacity of the people. 

"It is always the worker who pays and it is 
imperative that the worker secures real value for 
money paid, even though the payments are made 
to his own class. 

"Just as surely as he suffers if he squanders 
individual resources, so he suffers if he dissi- 
pates or permits the dissipation of national re- 
sources. " 

"High wages, short hours, cheap food and 
cheap housing accommodation are desirable 
things, but they are impossible apart from high 
efficiency and maximum production. 

"Unless he learns this lesson, the worker will 
pay in unemployment and in personal degradation 
and he will involve his wife and his children in 
his debts and their consequences." 



70 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Endeavouring to emphasise the coming dangers, 
I said, on March 6th, 19 19: 

"Throughout Britain, there are hundreds of 
thousands of sound trade unionists who fear the 
consequences of unauthorised and irresponsible 
strikes. Their fears are accentuated by the com- 
mercial situation which is developing." 

u Tin plates are already on the market at 20s. 
per ton less than British cost prices. Steel is 
being offered by Britain's competitors at a much 
lower rate than Britain can produce it, even with 
the aid of a subsidy. 

"Lancashire, with 75 per cent, of her trade 
overseas is faced with offers at 30 per cent, lower 
than present cost prices, while America is pre- 
pared to put coal into markets formerly monopo- 
lised by the British at rates very little in excess of 
what it will cost Britain to place coal in the port 
of export. 

"These are the facts, and no matter how 
unpleasant they appear, they have to be faced 
and dealt w T ith. It is no use appealing to 
Parliament for a solution of this problem. The 
industries must themselves find a solution or go 
out of business. 

"Fortunately, the mass of the people are full 
of common sense, and most of them can still 
appreciate consequences that must follow any fail-, 
ure on the part of Britain to maintain her export 
trade. 

"Without export there can be no regular 
employment for the mass, and without employ- 
ment, millions of perfectly innocent people — men, 
women and children — will be overwhelmed with 
tragic suffering." 



UNEMPLOYMENT 71 

Nothing was done, and in September, 1920, 
endeavouring to interest the Trade Unions, I wrote 
that: 

"To discover the real causes of unemployment 
and the real remedies would be worth all the 
money the Trade Union movement possesses. To 
go on repeating the old formulae in face of the 
world's facts will be folly of the worst kind. It 
is no use talking about the right to work unless 
we can discover the laws that govern work and 
the proper way of applying them." 

Machinery to deal with effects, expensive and 
derogatory to moral qualities, was indeed installed, 
but nothing was done to remove or even to palliate 
root causes. Men continued, and were content to 
continue, in an atmosphere of hazy assumption and 
vague generality. For years they had been content 
to assert that unemployment was due to over- 
production, and this in spite of the efforts of sane 
economists to discredit the fallacy. Sporadic and 
particular cases of unemployment may indeed be 
caused by the temporary failure of industries or 
areas to distribute the commodities they have pro- 
duced, but to assert that over-production is the sole, 
or even the general, cause of unemployment is to 
invite the critic to say that the corollary would be 
equally true and that under-production would find us 
all busily occupied. Not even the Council of Action 
has been foolish enough to put this latter propo- 
sition into terms. 

While most of us are now satisfied that over- 



72 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

production is not the cause of unemployment, and 
that there has been no over-production of essential 
commodities, we are not satisfied that any of us 
apprehend the cause or all the causes, nor does it 
seem possible at any time to indicate complete and 
perpetual remedies. It is, however, possible to carry 
the probing of the problem much further than the 
majority have. 

The more closely this subject is studied, the more 
difficult it seems to enunciate any formula that 
expresses the whole truth concerning unemployment. 

In the first place, it is necessary to break away 
from the common practice of reasoning only from 
immediate and obvious circumstances. Unemploy- 
ment is not a new problem, nor is it consequential 
upon the war, though war intensifies it. In 1909, 
when there were no war consequences to confound 
commercial and industrial enterprises, the Board of 
Trade returns showed, at one time, and in a number 
of occupations, unemployment affected 9^ per cent, 
of the people engaged. It is evident, therefore, that 
if we would form tenable conceptions of fundamen- 
tal causes, we must go further back than 1920 or 
1909. 

Recently, it was argued that poverty supplied the 
basic cause, but closer consideration suggested that 
poverty was an attendant circumstance rather than 
a cause, and that it would be necessary to go deeper 
still. The more men thought, the more they were 
inclined to the conception of a set of causes which 
might be divided into what appeared to be actuating 



UNEMPLOYMENT 73 

and precipitating causes. The actuating cause, 
though not the only cause, which obtruded itself 
with the persistency of a recurring decimal, was the 
disappearance of equilibrium between natural re- 
sources and national needs. 

By natural resources I mean the area and quality 
of the soil; the nature and variety of indigenous 
crops; the character and accessibility of minerals; 
the geographical situation and the climatic condi- 
tions. While these, plus certain human attributes, 
are equal to the maintenance of the population at 
current standards of existence, there is little danger 
of unemployment, except such as arises from the 
moral or physical ineptitudes of individuals. 

It is when the population outgrows the natural 
resources of a country that the possibility of unem- 
ployment and starvation and death emerges and 
compels the dispersal of populations or the higher 
development of human attributes and the acquire- 
ment of what I must, for the moment, describe as 
extraneous resources. 

It is impossible to say exactly when the need 
for these additional resources actually developed. 
Englishmen, because of their restlessness, and 
Scotsmen, because of their impecuniosity, have, for 
centuries, sought better conditions in many lands. 
Whether, or when, the earlier adventurers ex- 
hausted the possibilities of their own countries, does 
not clearly appear, but the fact that Edward III 
fixed wages and working conditions by statute sug- 



74 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

gests that employment was not all that was desirable 
in the fourteenth century. 

In 1 80 1, the population of England and Wales 
had risen to 8,892,000, and it is clear from the 
annals of the times that natural resources were then 
carrying a fairly full load and that any very appre- 
ciable addition to the population could only be sup- 
ported if the resources of other lands were acquired 
and exploited. 

Investigators, inventors and adventurers were, 
however, at work. Coalfields were exploited: the 
modern steam engine was discovered; sailors and 
soldiers and merchants opened up territories and 
opportunities, and the balance between internal 
resources and national needs was temporarily and 
perhaps indifferently adjusted. 

More than recovery took place. The enterprise 
of the thinkers and the fighters made possible the 
extraordinary increase in population which took 
place between 1801 and 1901. Remember it was 
the same old country, the same area, the same soil; 
patches of gravel, of sand, of loam and of clay, with 
hills of chalk and mountains of stone; the same 
variable climate, and yet the area that was support- 
ing 8,892,000 in 1801, was supporting 32,000,000 
in 1901. 

While recovery took place, the conditions of life 
became less stable. Instead of agriculture being the 
base upon which Britain built, it was industrialism, 
and industrialism is always more susceptible to 
fluctuation than is agriculture. The raw material 



UNEMPLOYMENT 75 

of the agriculturist is always at hand, and he may- 
maintain life by directly consuming his own produc- 
tions. Not so the industrialist. He must buy from 
varied and frequently distant markets the raw mate- 
rials he manipulates, and the products of his industry 
can only be consumed in small part by himself. They 
must be exchanged, and any circumstance which 
adversely affects his capacity to exchange, leaves him 
idle and in peril. It is in disturbance of equilibrium 
between natural resources and national needs and in 
failing capacities for exchange that we must seek for 
the basic causes of unemployment. 

The line of demarcation between basic and pre- 
cipitating causes is not always clear. Failure to 
effect remunerative exchange may stand in both 
categories, and whether it is war that arrests, or 
industrial inefficiency which accentuates, the results 
are pretty much the same. The thousands of mil- 
lions whose existence depends upon the sale or ex- 
change, rather than the personal consumption, of 
the things they make, find their occupations gone, 
though their appetites remain. Ignorance, waste, 
and economic misdirection, are attendant causes of 
unemployment and have had their share in the de- 
velopment of the situation which exists in Britain 
to-day, and whether we consider remedies or pallia- 
tives, we fail unless we educate the people, eliminate 
waste, and acquire a sense of obedience to economic 
law. 

To-day, it may be argued that we spend enough 
on education. We spend too much on education 



76 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

which attaches more importance to subjects than it 
does to character. There is no need to spend more, 
or at present to provide further facilities. What is 
needed most is a development of inclinations, and 
every man and woman who is capable of feeling any 
sense of responsibility, can become an unpaid teacher 
of the things that make for national greatness. No 
new buildings are needed for this class of teacher, 
but their unofficial and voluntary and inexpensive 
efforts can effect greater moral changes than all 
Whitehall's machinery. 

It is only an educated democracy — and by edu- 
cated I mean, possessing a developed sense of right 
and practicability, that can appreciate either the need 
for, or the means of, securing balance between what 
they produce and what they require. It is only an 
educated democracy that will face the basic facts 
of unemployment, and take the apparently brutal 
steps necessary to secure amelioration which does 
not involve increased liability. I am, therefore, all 
for education, provided it is of the right kind. 

In 1801, we had a population of 8,892,000. 
To-day we have 46,000,000. Obviously, they can- 
not all live by tilling the soil, because there is not' 
enough soil, and their attempts during the last year 
or two to live upon each other have not been wholly 
successful. The alternatives that present themselves 
will not appeal to the mendicants or to the Utopians, 
but there is no escaping their inevitability. Either 
you transfer the people who want food to the lands 
which grow food, or you increase the variety and the 



UNEMPLOYMENT 77 

quality and the saleability of the goods your people 
manufacture, and also your capacity as world car- 
riers of merchandise, or you starve and deteriorate 
until your effectiveness is less than the cheaper yellow 
and brown men, and then, you go out. Go out, 
and give place to the more adaptable. 

It is dangerous to a degree to continue on the 
assumption that the Almighty will continue to inter- 
pose special providences between Britain and disso- 
lution. 

Assuming that the foregoing conceptions of cause 
and remedies are accepted and that the people are 
prepared to emigrate or to increase the selling value 
of the goods they produce, the question arises as 
to how we shall deal with the suffering and want 
which already exists. 

Amplify immediately your plans for emigration. 
The Colonial Office has already done something, but 
it can, and must, do more. Means of transport and 
means of subsistence must be temporarily provided. 
Those who go out must be directed to the best places 
and aided in their search for work. Communication 
between them and the Homeland and the other 
Dominions must be maintained in order to encourage 
their sense of common relationship. With proper 
care, it should, in this way, be possible to transform 
many human liabilities into human assets. 

There are objections to emigration. They come 
from people whose grounds for objection differ 
greatly. Some are political, some are sentimental, 
and some may be quite selfish. The revolutionary 



78 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

objects to emigration because it removes congestion 
and discontent, and interferes with his programme. 
The legislator with a sense of responsibility objects 
because he believes that only the best and most enter- 
prising face the risks, and that their departure im- 
poverishes the remainder. The sentimentalist thinks 
of the old flag and the broken home circle; and the 
selfish one in these lands that are not yet overflowing 
with population, fears that his privileged position 
may be encroached upon. 

I have no concern with, or for, those who preach 
the doctrine of discontent. At best it is a miserable 
doctrine, and it may easily become a disastrous one. 
I sympathise with the statesman who fears the 
consequences of reducing the average of strength and 
enterprise, and I can easily weep with those who 
imagine the old flag without defenders and the fire- 
side without particular loved ones; but neither their 
fears nor my tears can help the situation. It is bad 
to contemplate life outside one's Homeland, but it 
is worse to contemplate starvation and death within 
its borders. 

There are people in the Dominions who offer but 
frigid welcome to those who seek to transfer them- 
selves and their fortunes from Britain to the lands 
which Britain colonised. But their numbers are few, 
and their influence would be negligible provided the 
people on the other side were made partners in the 
enterprise. We must expect antagonism to ill- 
digested schemes. Any dumping in British markets, 
of foreign goods, creates annoyance, and we must not 



UNEMPLOYMENT 79 

regard as unreasonable the Canadian, the Austra- 
lian, the New Zealander, or the South African who 
objects to human, and sometimes damaged freight 
being dumped upon his shores without a u by your 
leave." 

The Dominions' need of population is just as 
great as is our need of relief from over-pressure. 
Figures concerning densities are illuminating. 
The number of persons to the square mile in Britain 
is 618; in Canada it is less than 2! Australia has 
an area forty-two times that of Britain, yet her 
population is about five-sevenths of that of Greater 
London. South Africa has millions of acres upon 
which white men may live and multiply. Whatever 
justification there may be for ousting the aboriginal 
disappears if his conqueror and successor fails to 
replenish the land. 

Recently, I have discussed this problem with 
representative and sympathetic Canadians. "We 
need your money, and we need your men, but don't 
send us counterfeits." "If you think we are aiming 
at graft, you're wrong, and if it will comfort you, 
we will make joint arrangements for the protection 
of both interests — yours and ours." 

An Imperial Conference is shortly to be held. 
The Premiers from overseas are even now gathering 
to discuss matters relating to the w r elfare of the 
Empire. I have no wish to detract from the dignity 
and the capacity of the men who are coming, but I 
am certain a solution of the problems of emigration 
and immigration will be unduly delayed if the trade 



80 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

unionists of the territories concerned are left outside 
the conference. I am certain that in Canada, Tom 
Moore and Harry Halford and P. M. Draper, 
whom I am proud to number amongst my personal 
friends, understand their own situation and sym- 
pathise with ours. The same applies to Archie 
Crawford in South Africa, while Australians know 
that they must encourage association with white 
men or risk succumbing to yellow men. Get your 
Imperial conference, but let us include those whose 
business it is to maintain wage standards and decent 
conditions; including them in the discussions and 
making them parties to the arrangements will vitiate 
antagonism and encourage co-operation. 

More efficient production may be regarded as 
complementary to emigration, or as an alternative. 
More efficient production should aim at increasing 
quantities and qualities and distributing facilities 
without trespassing upon the workman's legitimate 
opportunities to maintain health, to develop intelli- 
gence and moral, and to enjoy social and family 
amenities. The intellectual and mechanical aids to 
production should be exploited to the full, but the 
operating factors — the men and the women — must 
be mercifully dealt with. After all, they are made 
in the image of God, and it cannot be God's will 
that their lives should be seared and defaced. 

I have referred to distributive facilities and their 
necessary increase. For seaport towns, this is 
indeed a matter of the greatest importance. In 
such places the people will tell you that Britain 



UNEMPLOYMENT 81 

makes more by selling goods than she does by manu- 
facturing them, and that her prosperity is greatest 
when her carrying trade is most buoyant; when her 
ships float over the seven seas and into unnumbered 
ports. 

These people are right. Apart from her ships, 
Britain cannot exist. They feed her; they keep her 
in touch with her outer boundaries, and they main- 
tain inviolate her inner shores. But here also there 
is room for improvement, and if unemployment is 
to be combated, then those who go down to the 
sea in ships, and those who direct operations, must 
gather together, not to secure sectional triumphs, 
but to raise efficiency and to produce economy. 

Must we always ignore palliatives? This ques- 
tion is often asked, and the answer should always 
be — No! Personally, however, I differentiate be- 
tween remedies that go to the root and palliatives 
that weaken moral or dissipate capital. The pallia- 
tive proposals that have been most consistently 
pushed upon the public are represented by the 
phrases, "Stabilise exchanges," "Trade with Rus- 
sia," "Levy on Capital," "State Maintenance," 
"Credit System." 

Stabilising exchanges has, for many months, been 
the panacea of every superficial politician. One has 
been nauseated by the parrot-like injunction to the 
Government to do what the gratuitous adviser had 
no conception of doing. Stabilise them indeed — 
but how? The King, taking the matter seriously, 
and having the people instead of a party to consider, 



82 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

declares that this stabilising will keep the nations 
heavily occupied for many years. The seeker after 
cheap popularity would sweep aside this obstacle to 
national recovery as easily as he would remove the 
froth from a pint of porter. 

Stabilising exchanges is a lengthy process; in the 
meantime, what about the hungry? 

Trade with Russia is advocated as another in- 
fallible way of finding employment. I am certain 
that trading under the auspices of the present 
government of Russia would find employment, but 
whether it would find remuneration is another 
matter. It has never seemed to dawn upon the 
communist advocates of Trade with Russia that it 
would, under existing circumstances, mean work 
without pay, or at best, promise of deferred pay. 
That may be an acceptable doctrine at the gather- 
ing of the Red International, but it won't go down 
with the British Trade Unionist. Trade with Russia 
by all means. Trade with anyone who can give a 
quid pro quo. Beyond this I have yet to learn that 
the Government places any obstacles in the way of 
traders who are prepared to carry their own risks. 

"Establish a credit system," cries another palli- 
ator. During the war Britain went a long way in 
this direction, for she lent her Allies and her 
Dominions £1,852,233,269. If that sum were re- 
paid to-morrow it would enable the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer to liquidate our money debt to America 
and to reduce taxation, and by so doing to assist a 
revival of commercial and industrial activity. It 



UNEMPLOYMENT 83 

may be possible to lend more, or to send out more 
goods on mere promises to pay, but the safer policy 
seems to be that of bringing the price of our mer- 
chandise within the purchasing capacity of those 
peoples who, because of our price and our delayed 
deliveries, are seeking other sellers. 

"Levy capital" has been the proposal of many, 
and it is said that even the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer regarded the proposition with favour. It 
is still the premier plank in the programme of the 
Labour Party. Of all the easy solutions of existing 
problems this seems the most attractive. It claims 
to take from him that hath all that he has, and to 
give to him that hath not all that he hasn't. 

It never seems to strike the advocates of this 
solution that capital is essential to the maintaining 
the expansion of industry, or that its dissipation 
accentuates the difficulties of to-day. In the face of 
the facts of rating and taxation, one wonders how 
the advocates of capital levies, or the latest form of 
the same proposal — a tax on accumulated wealth — 
would proceed. It is said that local rates, 
which in 1904 were about £100,000,000, had risen 
in 19 19 to £194,000,000, and are estimated to 
rise in 192 1 to £250,000,000, while we know that 
Imperial taxation has risen from £200,000,000 to 
£1,400,000,000. 

These figures suggest that the real palliatives lie, 
not in the direction of increased levies or taxation, 
but in decreased expenditures. You cannot have 
your cake if you have eaten it, and you cannot de- 



84 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

velop your trade with capital that has been dissi- 
pated. 

"State maintenance." Here the position is not 
easy. The State has made many demands upon 
men; it has made them many promises; it has weak- 
ened moral fibre, and by continued interferences 
in trade and commerce, it has hampered recoveries. 
It is, consequently, under obligations which justify 
a demand for assistance. But this assistance, in the 
nature of things, can only be temporary. Sooner or 
later, the reserve of liquid capital will be exhausted 
and doles become impossible. The formula, "main- 
tenance or work," has been amended to read: "Pref- 
erably remunerative work." Maintenance without 
work means universal pauperism, to be followed by 
national bankruptcy. Work at preferably remunera- 
tive rates implies the possibility of subsidised work, 
which is another form of pauperism, or it means 
work which produces articles which can be sold in 
the world's markets at prices which leave a margin 
for wages. The question arises as to who is to 
organise the work, who is to sell the articles, and 
who is to fix the wages. The answer presumably is, 
the State. In that case, God help the workman. 

Attempts must be made to maintain those who 
cannot obtain employment, but the community cannot 
be expected to maintain those who evade work. 
Every time this is attempted the common standards 
are lowered, the aggregate liability increases and 
the conditions which precipitate unemployment be- 
come more acute. 



UNEMPLOYMENT 85 

It should be the business of the Trade Unions 
and the Employers' Associations to see that neither 
men nor women willing to work, lack opportunity. 
In the new Trade Unionism which I hope to see 
develop, it will be understood that unemployment 
of the able-bodied is quite as dangerous to the 
Unions as it is to the community. It always effects 
reductions in wages, or, to be more accurate, in the 
value of wages. These reductions are not always 
obvious, but they are, nevertheless, real. The cash 
received by those employed may be the same, but 
public opinion in Britain has decreed that the willing 
worker shall not starve, and if he does not earn his 
own living, it must be earned for him by the people 
who remain at work. The days of manna are passed, 
and there are no longer inexhaustible cruses of oil. 

In this matter, the Trade Unions must readjust 
their outlook. The fear of future unemployment 
impels them to inflict present unemployment upon 
men of their own class. That is, indeed, the real 
class war. The fact that 250,000 able-bodied ex- 
service men were unemployed, whilst others were 
working overtime, or holding up production, con- 
stitutes the gravest kind of industrial scandal. 

It is held by many Trade Unionists, and by the 
dilettanti who advise them, that the effective ab- 
sorption of these men would lead to continued over- 
production and an accentuation of unemployment. I 
very seriously ask those who hold this view to study 
the world's circumstances, and to face courageously 
the conclusions these circumstances suggest. The 



86 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

fact that millions are dying for want of goods, and 
that millions who can make goods are unemployed, 
suggests that many earlier conclusions are wrong, 
and that there are other and graver causes of unem- 
ployment. It is the duty of the Trade Unions to 
probe the circumstances until these causes are laid 
bare and the real remedies propounded. 

An investigation such as I suggest will probably 
prove that as like breeds like, so work accomplished 
breeds the possibility of more work to undertake; 
that employment tends to create employment by de- 
veloping purchasing power. Much of the hostility 
to the absorption of the unemployed in industries 
that require labour is due to carefully fostered 
prejudices and to the mistaken idea that price and 
value are synonymous terms. Men may receive very 
high prices for their work, without these prices en- 
abling them to purchase comfort. 

The problem which confronts us increases in com- 
plexity with each erroneous attempt to solve it. It 
is necessary to keep our people alive, but it is also 
necessary to elaborate means of maintaining balance 
between what our country can produce in the way of 
food and raw material and what our people need 
to maintain existence. Other people may have better 
solutions, but I feel that we must either decrease 
our numbers and our standards of living, or increase 
our capacity for profitable exchange in overseas 
markets. 



CHAPTER VI 

LABOUR UNREST 

UNREST is not a phenomenon of to-day. It is 
as eternal and almost as mysterious as the 
tides. It has found expression in all times and 
amongst all peoples. It really began when the 
second man saw the first and realised that priority 
might have given advantage. 

In the elementary stages, it lacks sentiency, and 
is impulsive rather than cohesive and consecutive. 
It has areas and periods of quiescence. Those who 
live in these periods often mistake quiescence for 
dissolution. Because unrest has ceased to be ob- 
viously expressive, it is sometimes assumed to be 
dead. Upon its percussion and repercussion depends 
the progress of peoples and the development of 
empires. 

Its expression appears to be good or bad ac- 
cording as education and understanding and oppor- 
tunity offer. Inasmuch as it represents force and 
motion, it is dynamic in character and it manifests 
itself in fear and doubt, in resentment, in avarice, 
and in violence. Fortunately, it also finds general 
and even more forceful expression in courage, in 
magnanimity, in generosity, and in desire for orderly 
progression. 

87 



88 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Amongst the mass of men, there is always fear 
arising out of the danger to life, to health, to finan- 
cial and social position. There are also the fears 
concerning food and shelter and the fate of depend- 
ents and as life passes the autumnal stage and ap- 
proaches winter, there is the tragic fear of the days 
when capacities are overstrained, resources are ex- 
hausted, and old age points the way to death. 

It may be blessed to be poor in spirit, but there 
is no blessedness in material poverty. It is popularly 
believed that Dives went to Hell, while the poor 
beggar went to the land fit for heroes. Nevertheless, 
the common predilection is still in favour of the posi- 
tion and chances of Dives. There are no willing 
candidates for the beggarship, but many for the 
position of the rich man; and that in spite of post- 
mortem risks. 

Resentment follows fear and is excited and intensi- 
fied by vulgar ostentation. The sijhts outside the 
popular restaurants and the ostentatious advertise- 
ment of expensive society functions are maddening 
to the workless or the ill-fed, and it is difficult for 
the poor woman to avoid this resentment when she 
beholds another of her sex with two hundred pounds 
of flesh on her body and two thousand pounds worth 
of rings on her fingers. 

Avarice is a common expression of unrest. It 
is always seeking to possess without giving equivalent 
returns, or without considering the effect of its 
operations upon others. Avarice is not the proprie- 
tary vice of the poor; the worship of the golden 



LABOUR UNREST 89 

calf is more common in Lombard Street than in 
Walworth Road. But the most terrifying expres- 
sions of unrest are the violent outbreaks against 
personal property. The circumstances which usually 
precede such outbreaks — unemployment and poverty 
— may be often ignored by the authorities ; but, once 
unrest passes from the active to the destructive, the 
whole community must become intensely interested. 

Whenever unrest is accentuated by unemployment 
and poverty, the baser kind of politician finds ample 
opportunities. Sometimes he is actuated by spleen; 
sometimes by ambition; and sometimes he plays 
upon the fears and suffering of the unfortunate 
for the purpose of furthering his own material for- 
tunes. Sometimes, again, it is ignorance of causes 
and inevitable effects which leads these baser poli- 
ticians to incite others to violence and theft. Those 
who lack knowledge, or are without proper feeling, 
or who hope to make things right by doing things 
wrong, are actively employed to-day. They are 
everywhere advising the poverty-stricken and work- 
less to satisfy their needs and desires by violent theft. 

That force is no remedy is an axiom which ought 
to be dinned into the ears of the blatant advocates 
of force, and also into the ears of those baser souls, 
who, lacking the courage openly to advocate violence, 
reiterate in their speeches in tones of approval the 
assertion that men are losing patience, and may be 
expected to take forcibly anything they may want. 

The repetition of this platitude may do quite as 
much harm as the open incitement. Whether this 



90 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

doctrine of violence is preached or insinuated, it is 
a damnable one. Put into practice, it must evolve 
waste of the worst kind, and suffering far in excess 
of what is at present being endured; for whatever 
looting takes place, half of the property stolen is 
invariably wasted. The greater part of the balance 
falls into the hands of professional thieves, and the 
real unemployed, instead of being assisted, are still 
further prejudiced. 

There is another consideration which ought to 
weigh with the unemployed and their advisers, and 
that is that the looter is no respecter of persons. 
He will just as readily steal from the poor as from 
the rich. The consideration, however, which weighs 
most with me is that the wealth of Great Britain is 
mostly in building and machinery; in ability and 
goodwill. If you burn and otherwise destroy your 
buildings and machinery, your ability and your good- 
will suffer the most deadly handicap. This handicap 
can only be overcome by suffering and labour, which, 
had there been no violence, would have been quite 
unnecessary. The form of unrest which finds expres- 
sion in violence and theft is the most reprehensible 
of all. It offers, apparently, an easy way, but takes, 
in fact, all but the few along a road that is strewn 
with thorns. 

The treatment of unrest must be educative, as 
well as palliative. Unfortunately, education has 
been left too much in the hands of the professional. 
To remedy this, every man and woman should 
become an educative force, teaching by example and 



LABOUR UNREST 91 

precept the things concerning life. Further, all their 
lessons should be based on a love of right and a 
desire to promote both in the individual, and in the 
community, right thinking and right action. Any 
system of education, whether professional or volun- 
tary, which sets the material above the moral is self- 
condemned, and fails to envisage unrest and harness 
it to good purposes. It is better to appreciate the 
Decalogue than to understand the Differential 
Calculus. 

Education is needed by all classes. No vacuities 
are more intolerable than are those of people who 
regard life as an interlude between birth and death, 
which can be spaced by exercises in physical adorn- 
ment and physical gratification. 

In addition to education, however, there must be 
a universal conservation of the means of livelihood. 
There must be no waste, Governmental or individual, 
to give rise to that form of unrest which arises from 
resentment against removable hardship. 

People are justified in being resentful with the 
Government for every form of waste; for the en- 
couragement of expenditures which are desirable, 
but inopportune; for imposing taxes which vitiate 
enterprise, and for subsidising some trades at the 
expense of others. Where they go wrong is when 
they assume that they can make the Government 
pay for its mistakes. The Government never pays 
anything; it only hands over, from one section of the 
community to the other, monies that have been de- 
rived from the earnings of men. 



92 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

State payment and State maintenance, which are 
being urged as palliatives for unrest, appeal with 
less force to-day than they did yesterday. The 
people are beginning to realise that salvation is a 
personal matter, in economics quite as well as in 
religion. The folly of depending upon the State 
for every human need and aspiration has become 
obvious; and the people are groping after better 
means of satisfying their wants. 

Everywhere, men are realising the failure of 
legislation effected hastily, at the instance of 
theorists, and too often enforced by Orders in 
Council. They are seeing that Acts of Parlia- 
ment, passed with the best of intentions, do not 
always produce the results intended. Taxing other 
people's property or enterprise has always been an 
agreeable occupation, but the pleasure decreases 
when the effect of the taxation is opposite to the 
intention of those who framed it. 

To-day we are seeing the dispersion of large 
estates, and this is said to be a matter of deliberate 
policy, but the results are not all that were expected. 
The big landowner is forced by taxation to sell ; the 
tenant farmer is afraid of disturbance and ambi- 
tiously buys up his holding. In doing this, he uses 
up all his ready money, and in all probability saddles 
himself with a mortgage and involves himself in a 
period of heartbreaking effort which may end only 
at his death. The framers of this legislation in- 
tended only to kill the big landowner ; but they may, 



LABOUR UNREST 93 

in fact, kill his tenant and throw his tenant's la- 
bourers out of employment. 

Lancashire has its own example of the perversity 
of intention. The delegates from its Trade Unions 
and political groups have been attending various 
trades and labour conferences where perfervid reso- 
lutions in favour of Home Rule for India have been 
carried with exultant unanimity. India has not been 
given Home Rule, but she has been given a much 
greater measure of power, and one of her first uses 
of this power has been to impose a protective tariff 
against Lancashire goods. 

It is not necessary for the delegates who helped 
to give India the power she is now using to apologise 
or explain. Everyone who knows them, knows that 
they never consciously intended to hurt their own 
people; but, they had drifted into politics. They 
were against the Government; they succumbed to 
idealism. But Lancashire finds the way into her 
best market narrowed and her staple industry handi- 
capped at a time when she is badly hit from other 
directions. 

In order to relieve some forms of unrest there 
must be concerted provision against social and in- 
dustrial accidents. Sickness, unemployment, super- 
annuation and death are contingencies which beget 
fear; and they must be dealt with if unrest is to be 
circumscribed and utilised for progress instead of 
for destruction. The State's efforts to meet these 
contingencies are neither complete nor successful. 
In sickness there is malingering amongst women and 



94 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

men; the medical service is ineffective, and the old 
voluntary care and control have given place to pro- 
fessionalism or quasi-prof essionalism. In unemploy- 
ment insurance there is much downright dishonesty 
that goes undetected because the people either do 
not realise their true interest, or because they con- 
sider it bad form to help the Government against 
the thief who steals benefits. 

Old age, too, is met in niggardly and irregular 
fashion, and much is left undone which might be done 
to rob death of some of its terrors. The provision 
of means to endow loved ones would soothe many 
last hours. The extension of the State's activities 
in these matters has not been fraught with perfect 
results. Its failures suggest that it has neither the 
genius nor the necessary moral quality for this kind 
of work. 

State activities are too costly, not only in the 
cash sense, but in respect of time wasted and moral 
fibre destroyed. The latter loss is appalling. This 
is delicate ground, for it is customary to deny or 
minimise the facts of pauperism. But the facts re- 
main, and the tendency towards pauperism is more 
manifest to-day than it has been in any other period 
of Britain's history. This is not to be wondered at, 
for whilst the old Poor Law marked definite lines 
and provided local control, the Approved Society and 
the Employment Exchange offer very obvious and 
dangerous opportunities for the shirker. 

Are there better ways of treating these expres- 
sions of unrest than those at present in operation? 



LABOUR UNREST 95 

I believe there are. For unemployment, for super- 
annuation, and for death, or what I would call post- 
mortem liabilities, the industry appears to be a 
better unit than the State. There are difficulties, but 
none of them appear to be insurmountable, provided 
employers and workers, through their central or- 
ganisations, set aside preconceptions and adopt the 
easiest methods of collecting funds, distributing bene- 
fits, and preventing malingering; provided also that 
each industry shall contribute each year, from any 
surplus, a fixed percentage to an equalising pool. 
Averages of unemployment, sickness, superannua- 
tion, etc., would vary between trades, and even in 
trades, between seasons, and the central reserve 
upon which unfortunate industries might draw would 
be a necessity. 

To raise economically the necessary money it 
would be advisable to abolish the existing system 
of contributions, and substitute a percentage paid 
each week by each employer upon the wages of each 
worker, this percentage to be ascertained by actu- 
aries, and quinquennially adjusted. It would then be 
only necessary for the Trade Unions to collect the 
contributions for trade purposes. 

Those charges for sickness and unemployment are 
at present nominally divided between the workman, 
the employer, and the State. This is done in order 
to conciliate interests, but it would be more eco- 
nomical if, instead of the various threepences, six- 
pences, and shillings paid in various ways, the em- 
ployer paid the whole. A cheque could go into the 



96 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

local bank to the credit of the industry, and the 
workman's record card could be stamped with one 
stamp for each week of employment; and, as at 
present, his sickness and unemployment benefits 
would be affected by the number of contributions 
paid on his behalf. 

Superannuation would be influenced by the num- 
ber of weeks a man or woman was employed. I 
should aim at one pound per week at fifty years 
of age, with actuarial additions for each period of 
five years until sixty-five was reached. For post- 
mortem liabilities I would provide a fixed sum, 
whether a person died after one month's employ- 
ment, or after fifty years, it would be the same. In 
no case would the individual have cause to complain. 
The industry rather than the individual would di- 
rectly meet the cost, and it might be that the earlier 
deaths would leave greater dependency, that is, more 
young children, aged parents, and others unable to 
earn their own maintenance. It would not be al- 
together desirable to scrap existing institutions; that 
might be too costly. They could be remodelled 
with the idea of reducing labour, eliminating profit, 
and confining the Government's part to the advisory 
and the provision of highly technical information. 
Governments might guide, but not administer; pro- 
vide statistics and actuaries, but not control. 

The administration and control of finance should 
be in the hands of a small commission of representa- 
tive Trade Unionists and employers; the residuum 



LABOUR UNREST 97 

of need which these could not cover must be met by 
the Boards of Guardians. 

The more this question is studied, the more 
definite is the conclusion that the State must go out 
of these insurances against social and industrial 
contingencies if honesty is to prevail. At the present 
moment politicians promise improvements and ex- 
tensions whenever an election is imminent. The 
position is immoral to a degree, and it is difficult to 
decide who is the greater criminal, the man who, for 
his own ends, votes the public money, or the man 
who takes it. 

Can the industries bear the cost of insurance 
against social accidents ? They are bearing the cost 
to-day, plus the cost of varied methods of collection 
and administration. The foregoing suggestions in- 
volve a revolution, but it is a revolution which lets 
no blood and destroys no property. If such a system 
were in vogue, the shirker could be dealt with as he 
ought to be — that is, as a criminal. The decent 
people — and they are still the majority — might 
be expected to increase in efficiency and production. 
Unrest would not be eliminated, but it could be 
used to drive the social machine instead of to wreck 
it. 

Have we brains enough to give effect to such 
ideas? 

The answer is surely in the affirmative. We can 
do these things, and in addition, build up new con- 
ceptions. The one most needed at present is a 
new conception of aristocracy. The highest classes 



98 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

should be those who do most, and not those who 
spend most: those who try hardest and not those 
who lie hardest: those who set duties above rights, 
and who view with greater regard their duty towards 
their fellows than their prospects of acquiring power 
or accumulating riches. 

Unless our studies of unrest and its treatment 
tend toward such a result, Britain cannot remain the 
brains and heart of a great Empire, or even the 
centre of a great Commonwealth. 

There are some who seek to accentuate the less 
desirable expressions of unrest on the assumption 
that unrest is divine. It can only be divine when it 
aims at divine things. 



CHAPTER VII 
STRIKES, WAGES AND VALUES 

NO one, least of all myself, desires to perpetu- 
ate the bad that marred the industrial condi- 
tions prevailing in pre-war days. 

Hours were too long, wages were too low. The 
conditions in which men and women worked were 
often dangerous to life and health, and the condi- 
tions under which they lived were frequently inferior 
to those which were provided for cattle. 

Nobody doubts that these conditions endangered 
both the health of the worker and the life of the 
State. Nobody suggests that they should continue. 

Everyone agrees that change should take place. 
The only difference is as to methods of effecting 
change. 

The majority desires to move steadily and on 
constitutional lines; but the minority, made up for 
the most part of men who have no knowledge of 
competitive industry, and who never accept respon- 
sibility for anything more important than words> 
seeks, by any means, to precipitate social and poli- 
tical disaster, in the hope that their own particular 
theories and fortunes may be advanced. 

Men of this type were behind the strikes in 
Glasgow, in Belfast, in London and on the Tyne. 

99 



100 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Often they were defeated, but always they come back 
again with fresh programmes for the bemusion of 
the workers. 

When these men have trumpeted, the Govern- 
ment has retreated, and it has done this so frequently 
that the extremists have been able to persuade their 
followers that the Government feared them, and 
would ultimately accede to their demands, no matter 
how preposterous those demands might be. 

These revolutionaries never consider the effect 
of their activities upon the community as a whole, 
nor do they appreciate the awful effects which their 
perpetuation of uncertainty has upon British in- 
dustry. They act as if the trades and the people of 
this country were independent of each other and of 
international considerations. 

If they do understand anything of this country's 
dependence on overseas trade for food supplies, 
they hide or disregard their understanding. If they 
can show that any increase in nominal wages tempo- 
rarily follows their agitations, they still further se- 
cure the allegiance of the ill-educated and unthinking. 

To-day, one result of their efforts is the grave 
endangering of Lancashire's export trade. The 
cotton operatives look to the home markets to absorb 
between 20 and 30 per cent, of their production. 
India has hitherto taken about 40 per cent. The 
balance goes to China, South America, the Levantine 
and other parts of the world. 

All these markets are equally open to Lancashire's 
competitors. The extremists amongst the miners, 



STRIKES, WAGES AND VALUES 101 

railwaymen and postal employees may win tem- 
porary advantage for their own people, but their 
activities involve immediate, and in all probability 
permanent, disadvantage for their fellow workers in 
the cotton and other industries. 

One of the most thoughtful of Lancashire's cotton 
leaders declared sorrowfully that Lancashire trade 
could not exist for twelve months unless export was 
assured. How can export be assured under continual 
disturbance in basic and essential trades? How can 
export be assured in face of the soaring costs of 
coal, of transport, and of communication? 

Export is impossible apart from production, and 
sale in overseas markets is equally impossible unless 
the quality and price of the article submitted for 
sale approximates to that of similar articles sub- 
mitted by those nations who have been, and will be, 
Britain's competitors. 

It might be possible, by artificial restriction, to 
prevent other people's goods from entering Great 
Britain. It is not possible to prevent them entering 
British Colonies or other once British markets; nor 
is it possible to force highly-priced and low quality 
British goods on any unwilling foreign market. 

The unauthorised and synchronised strike destroys 
national and international confidence, makes ordered 
and remunerative production impossible. It dislo- 
cates trade and creates suffering for most, and star- 
vation for many. 

It is extraordinary that, up to the present, the 
promoters and supporters of unauthorised strikes 



102 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

have been the same men who tried to provoke indus- 
trial disturbances during the war. They are men 
whose anti-British sympathies have been openly ex- 
pressed. 

During the war they constantly demanded peace 
by negotiation. Now the war is over, and the need 
for production is imperative, they flout peace and 
make industrial war on every possible occasion. 
That the workers they have led (or misled) might 
have secured advantages by following more con- 
stitutional methods is perfectly demonstrable. 

The National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives 
have never drawn a man out where negotiation and 
settlement by reason was possible. All their disputes 
have been settled in conference, and their increase 
in wages, spread over a fair period, compare very 
favourably with those secured by the men who have 
adopted extreme courses. 

The shoemaker was always a thinking person, and 
during the war he acted with sensibility and fore- 
thought. He has neither starved production nor 
opposed the introduction of machinery, nor need- 
lessly depleted the funds of his Trade Union. 

It is of profound interest to the Trade Unionists 
who have lent themselves to irresponsible movements 
that they should consider the future as well as the 
present effects of unauthorised or political (or, in- 
deed, any) strikes. The older fellows, with some 
experience of ordinary competitive conditions, will 
do well to set their faces against the youngsters who 
lack experience and the extremists whose objective 



STRIKES, WAGES AND VALUES 103 

is political rather than industrial. They must think 
hard over some problems of trade and commerce 
for themselves, and resolutely refuse to be led into 
the street merely for the purpose of destroying the 
organisations which, through very difficult times, 
have fought for better wages, hours and conditions. 
A Trade Union shattered by foolish or criminal dis- 
regard of altered conditions is the weakest kind of 
reed to lean upon when times are bad. In any war 
against society the members of such Unions must 
themselves suffer, for they form part of society. 

The miners have sacrificed industrial for political 
objectives, but there have been others equally repre- 
hensible. If the miners increase the cost of fuel, and 
the railway workers the cost of transport, they 
inevitably limit the markets in which their fellow 
workers sell their productions, and ultimately de- 
crease also the value of their own labour. The iron 
and steel smelter, the engineer, the textile worker 
and all those engaged in auxiliary or general work 
suffer, and will continue to suffer grievously as a con- 
sequence of the activities of those who get coal, 
transport goods and men, and have charge of postal 
or telegraphic communication. If these force uneco- 
nomic rates and conditions, all the other workers 
must work harder and longer for less money in order 
to restore the balance. The extremists in these 
trades have not only upset the new heaven and earth 
conceptions, but they have jeopardised the eight- 
hour day and many other ameliorations of old-time 
conditions. 



104 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

During this last fifty years the country has drawn 
the majority of its comforts, as well as its foods, 
from overseas trade. If the cost of fuel and trans- 
portation and communication is materially increased, 
greater effort instead of less will be necessary in 
all other occupations, and in face of the competition 
of other countries, to maintain the existing standard 
of living. The pressing of wages beyond a certain 
level is, in effect, like forcing too high a pressure 
in a steam boiler. The engineer knows that a boiler 
will safely carry a pressure of so many pounds 
to the square inch. He knows that if he doubles 
this pressure he does not double the power 
capacity of the boiler. What he does is to blow the 
boiler out of the window, and if poetic justice ob- 
tains, he also goes out of the window with the boiler. 
This very simple illustration represents an immu- 
table law. There is no escape from it. When the 
workman learns this lesson, he will have learned 
something advantageous to himself and to the com- 
munity. 

Another effect of the extraordinary increase in 
the price of coal will be to turn the attention of 
scientists to some other form of fuel for power 
and lighting purposes. It would be stupid for the 
miners to imagine that there is no substitute for 
coal. 

General dissatisfaction, accentuated by loose talk 
and strengthened by ignorance of the laws of ex- 
change, or the influence of the selling price in over- 
seas markets on the price of labour in England, is 



STRIKES, WAGES AND VALUES 105 

mainly responsible for the success which attends the 
efforts of strike makers. They have been helped, 
too, by the fact that most of the young men now 
employed have no experience of industry carried on 
under normal conditions. They entered the work- 
shops when the stress of war was at its greatest, 
and when wages were paid without regard to the 
economic value or the exchange value of the work 
performed. 

They cannot realise the abnormality of conditions 
either during or following the war, and their per- 
plexity and contumacy has been encouraged by the 
weak, and frequently indiscreet, handling of succes- 
sive problems by the Government. The Govern- 
ment apparently thought that the best way to meet 
demands was to hand out more money from bor- 
rowed reserves. A better plan would have been to 
face the situation fairly and squarely, and to tell the 
people the real truth about production and wages. 

Most men know that no one can manufacture at a 
loss, and the only justification for Government inter- 
ference would, therefore, be its willingness and 
ability to make up loss by subsidy. 

Subsidy has been the policy of the Government 
for the past few years, and it is difficult for the very 
ignorant to do other than regard its continuance as 
necessary and easy. They cannot, or will not, differ- 
entiate between political desideration and economic 
values and necessities. 

It is doubtful, indeed, whether many know or care 
that the wages they received whilst engaged on muni- 



106 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

tions were borrowed at high rates of interest, or 
that the reasons which justified borrowing to pre- 
serve national existence do not justify borrowing to 
promote industrial laxity or national luxury. Even 
if further borrowing is possible, it is certainly not 
desirable. 

The official leaders of the Trade Union move- 
ment, as distinguished from the political, are deeply 
anxious to secure for their men the just reward of 
their labour, but they know that the reward cannot 
continuously exceed the value of the articles pro- 
duced, nor can these values be determined during 
street riots or hooligan outbreaks. 

The six-hour day may be an economic possibility, 
but at present there are no facts from which men can 
draw satisfactory conclusions. Such facts can only 
accrue from experience, and meanwhile, there re- 
mains the one great fact that wages must be paid 
out of production. If six hours will not provide 
sufficient to pay wages, wages will be cut down, or 
more hours will be worked. It sounds brutal, but it 
is sheer economic fact. 

It may be exciting to rush history, but it is mostly 
dangerous and always expensive. 

Idleness does not beget happiness, nor is work 
necessarily irksome, or injurious to health or mo- 
rality. A man may provide for his own daily needs 
in less than six hours, but he has duties towards 
his family and towards that human residuum which, 
through age or bodily infirmity, cannot provide for 
itself. He must also make provision against sickness, 



STRIKES, WAGES AND VALUES 107 

accidents, famine and the family difficulties that too 
often follow the death of the mainstay. 

The formula, "to everyone according to his 
needs" is an impossibility apart from its corollary, 
"from everyone according to his capacities." 

How to obtain from each his maximum produc- 
tion is a problem of eternity rather than time. For 
ten thousand years autocrats, economists and soci- 
ologists have variously regarded slavery, law and 
selfishness as applicable incentives, but to-day the 
contention of the sociologist appears to be upper- 
most. The right to possess and accumulate provides 
a greater inducement to effort than does knowledge 
of law or fear of punishment. The tendency 
(transient, of course) to appropriate for communal 
uses the fruits of individual efforts, has already led 
to dangerous slackening on the part of many capable 
producers. They are electing to live upon capital 
rather than earnings, and unless this inclination is 
checked, there can be no real upraising of national 
well-being. 

The standard of living depends upon the standard 
of production. If the latter is low, the former can- 
not be high. The world abounds with proofs of the 
fact that the nation w 7 hich produces little, enjoys 
little. If the miner refuses to produce coal, the poor 
have no fires. If the raihvaymen refuse to carry 
goods, the poor have no food. What applies to the 
miner and the railwaymen, applies equally, though 
perhaps not so obviously, to the whole gamut of 
human enterprises and affairs. 



108 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Unfortunately, the continued intervention by the 
Government in labour affairs has changed the char- 
acter of the labour struggle. This has become poli- 
tical instead of industrial. It is against the Govern- 
ment, rather than against the employer, that the 
present fights are waged. The employer is the ex- 
cuse, not the objective, and it may require a hard 
hand on the snaffle to bring labour back to the 
sane path of economics, activity and development. 

The immediate effects of all industrial disturb- 
ances which have not as their basis real economic 
advancement, will be higher prices for food, for 
clothes, and every other thing the poor use. The 
suffering will be accentuated by unemployment 
beyond anything yet experienced, for if workmen 
disregard contracts, the employers cannot contract 
to produce goods, and the merchants cannot contract 
to sell them, either in Britain or overseas. 

This is as certain as that night follows day. 
Apart from honest and continuous endeavour and 
from honour in bargaining, there can be no confi- 
dence, no enterprise; commerce will stagnate, em- 
ployment will fail, and women and children will 
starve. 

In the preceding pages much has been said about 
the need for the worker to give value for wages, 
and it is now necessary to ask, "Has Capital done 
all it can, and ought to do, for Labour?" 

For all time, capital has, in its own opinion, ful- 
filled its duty when it has paid the highest wages 
labour could secure by individual or collective de- 



STRIKES, WAGES AND VALUES 109 

mand. The conditions under which men have lived, 
the standard of their education, the measure of their 
daily anxieties, the depth of their suffering when old 
age overtook them, these were not the concern of 
capital. 

There have been exceptions, but until recently, 
these were only sufficient to emphasise the rule. 

War was the precipitating influence, rather than 
the cause, of present industrial troubles. War threw 
lurid lights on the situation; it awoke dormant sensi- 
bilities and aspirations. War set up a new caste, 
those who, by courage, physique, and intelligence, 
could accomplish things. Under the old conditions, 
riches provided the main qualifications for social 
standing; now they are only of secondary importance. 
In the heroic ages it has always been the same; ele- 
mentary capacities have counted. During the war, 
literally hundreds of thousands of men were pro- 
moted from the ranks because they possessed these 
qualities. Many of these men are now in industry, 
only to find that no real change has been effected; 
that all the old problems exist; that national sub- 
stance has been frittered away, and that their handi- 
cap has been increased. 

These men have been trained to smash military 
obstacles; they may want to smash the obstacles and 
restraints imposed by parties and Governments. 

The industrial and commercial problems of to-day 
are too great for anything but collaborated effort. 
Those who produce and those who direct have joint 
responsibilities. If men would seek to deal with 



110 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

labour, they must get to know it. Sentiment has 
been outraged — and sentiment will fight. Every 
slum, every premature death, every illiterate, every 
thrifty soul whose wages were too low to enable 
him to avoid indigence, every housewife whose in- 
come is relatively less than before the war, will 
struggle against the conditions that did obtain, and 
that do obtain. 

Are we going to oppose these struggles, or are 
we going to assist them? Are we going to drive 
sheep, or to lead men? 

If we want to lead men, we must intelligently in- 
terest them. They must see a common objective as 
well as their employers' point of departure. 

It is claimed that the socialisation of everything 
will enable shorter hours to be worked and higher 
wages to be paid. To advance this theory is to 
ignore all history since Moses, and all experiences 
of the past six years. During the war, Britain was 
under a socialistic Government in the sense that the 
Government controlled the land, the mines, the rail- 
ways, and other means of production and distribu- 
tion. It is perhaps justifiable to say that during 
this period, not a soul in Great Britain, apart from 
the official souls, has been satisfied with the efforts 
of the Government. People had to purchase what 
they were permitted to purchase, and pay the prices 
fixed by Departments which were not always suc- 
cessful in estimating values. 

It is fair to say that no grade of society was 
prepared for the war or for the circumstances which 



STRIKES, WAGES AND VALUES 111 

followed. The churches were less concerned with 
the here than with the hereafter. Their ignorance 
of life and death led them, and leads them, to 
philander round phrases, and to seek salvation in 
the dogmatic utterances of men, who, in spite of 
cheaply achieved notoriety, are little more experi- 
enced in economic law and fact than are those who 
fill high places in the churches. 

It became fashionable to talk of the "f og of war." 
That was clarity compared with the fog which has 
followed war. Everywhere men are seeking to dis- 
cover ersatz solutions instead of those which history 
and natural law alike suggest. So fanatical has be- 
come the advocacy of ersatz apostles that anyone 
who suggests the less ornamental, but more effective, 
remedy of work, is called a traitor to his class. 

It is asserted that the Government found eight 
millions per day for the war, and that it can continue 
providing for the circumstances that follow the war v 
The fact that the Government did not find the 
money, but borrowed it, does not appear to have any 
weight, nor does the further fact that you cannot 
borrow without credit, and that Britain's credit is 
so bad in America that we can only get "less than 
four dollars to the pound instead of a normal five, 
while in Holland, it is something like i8|- instead 
of 2o|-. 

If all men would sit down and write out what 
it is that they really want; if they would also write 
out how they hope to attain their desire, and whether 
what they want is right and free from infringement 



112 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

of the rights of other men, we should have gone a 
long way towards achieving success. If all men 
would realise that value is the whole basis of indus- 
try ; that nothing can be taken unless an equivalent is 
given, half the ideas that create strikes and disturb- 
ances would be killed instantly, and the other half 
would cease to influence. 

In our younger days we were taught that there 
is no royal road to success. The writers of the copy- 
book headings were wise men. If we would realise 
that in industry and commerce the road is generally 
difficult, and can only be traversed by those who have 
strength and will power, and who are not afraid of 
the burdens that accumulate as they pass along, then 
we may hope for success.. 



CHAPTER VIII 
WAGES AND METHODS 

THAT war would disturb men's minds and judg- 
ments was to be expected. Very few, however, 
expected the aftermath to be so serious, or that men 
would so completely mistake the shadow for the 
substance. 

One wonders whether the war is responsible al- 
together for men's failure to estimate correctly both 
material and moral values. For two hundred years, 
Britain has been violently involved in, and with in- 
dustry, and for fifty years, she has enjoyed whatever 
advantages may be derived from a compulsory sys- 
tem of education. If men make mistakes in reason- 
ing and judgment, much of the blame must rest on 
the shoulders of employers, who callously disre- 
garded the human material they had to deal with, 
and upon the system which gave the schoolmaster 
his timetables and schedules and inspiration. Per- 
haps, in these latter years, we have been altogether 
wrong in our conceptions of life and education, and 
instead of devoting most, or all, of our time towards 
the cult of commercialism and the development of 
intellectuality, we ought to have concentrated our 
attention on improving physique and character and 
the capacity for right thinking. 

113 



114 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Unfortunately for the individual, and for the 
nation, education has been too often the sport of 
religious fanatics and of political parties. Each has 
subordinated the interests of the child to the success 
of its own particular schemes. Some of the parties 
and factions have been perfectly honest in their opin- 
ions. They have believed that their methods were 
right, but the results, as one views them to-day, are 
unsatisfactory and disconcerting. 

If all men knew what was right, and were imbued 
with the desire to do right, social and political prob- 
lems would solve themselves with a minimum of 
suffering and a minimum of bitterness. Men would 
be able to distinguish the substance from the shadow, 
and the real from the unreal. The objective of all 
men's studies would be truth and fact — because they 
would know for a certainty that only upon truth and 
fact can happiness be based and communities exist. 

All the mistakes made in Britain have their 
counterparts in other countries. It is common to 
hear people express their sense of thankfulness for 
this commonality of error. This is a mistake. To 
extend sorrow and trouble does not necessarily re- 
lieve anybody, and it would be much better if we 
were in a position to rejoice in the possession of 
wisdom and in the knowledge that all nations were 
with us and were moving definitely in the direction 
of conclusions based upon understanding and right- 
eousness. 

Each country is demanding higher standards of 
existence, and if each country understood what was 



WAGES AND METHODS 115 

right, higher standards might at once be brought 
nearer. Unhappily, too many men expect to achieve 
this higher standard without personal effort. 

Thinking over these matters very long and very 
carefully, has led to the conclusion that there can 
be no definite advancement in material well-being 
unless the value of all work performed is ascertained, 
and all workers paid according to the value of the 
product of their labours. I am quite aware that this 
would mean something very different to the general 
demand of to-day, which is for equal payment to all, 
irrespective of the character or value of the work 
performed. Under this system of payment by re- 
sults, three men engaged on the same task, and work- 
ing the same length of time, might be very differently 
rewarded. Owing to natural aptitude or skill, one 
man, in a given time, might produce three, four or 
five units of value as against the other men's one. 

However much modern thought may criticise such 
a method of rewarding labour, it is obvious that the 
advantages to the community would be greater than 
those accruing under a system which encourages "ca' 
canny," and which leads the mass of men to expect 
rewards according to their requirements, rather than 
their services. There can be no greater delusion 
than the one which implies — by action, if not in 
actual words — that the inefficient can be equally 
rewarded without the efficient suffering. If men 
want to enjoy greater happiness, they will have to 
put forward more intelligent effort. All the talking 
from Westminster to Glasgow cannot disprove this 



116 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

contention, nor increase the weight or value of 
corn, nor accelerate the revolutions at which a 
machine may be driven, nor place the slates on the 
roof of a single house. 

Vague allusions to inefficient methods of distribu- 
tion confuse without resolving the problem. It is 
indeed absurd to expect a happy evolution of condi- 
tions by merely changing the method of distribution. 
Commodities must be produced before the distribu- 
tor gets a chance of showing his skill. Questions of 
fairness or unfairness in distribution are of pro- 
found importance, but they are secondary in impor- 
tance to the need for production. 

Those who imagine that they can successfully re- 
verse the order in which these two functions must 
be performed are indeed chasing shadows. 

Britain's position in the world depends mainly 
in her external trade. The comfort and well-being 
of many millions is determined by the buyer in for- 
eign markets. The quantity of manufactured goods 
sold, and the amounts paid for these goods, deter- 
mine the standard of living and the real wages of 
the people. Wage systems which offer relatively the 
highest rewards for the lowest standards of effi- 
ciency, or fiscal arrangements which affect the flow 
of external trade, are of profound importance. 

Some who are discussing trade, hope to improve it 
by imposing arbitrary restrictions upon it; they pro- 
pose to limit trade with alien countries; they hope 
always to maintain national existence upon internal 
effort and resources. 



WAGES AND METHODS 117 

Even a cursory glance at these proposals suggests 
that, in addition to untoward results at home, they 
might create unhappy situations abroad, and furnish 
perpetual bases for international quarrels. 

Is it wise to trail the commercial coat in the 
dust, and constantly to invite retaliation? Can we 
even persuade all our Allies that our efforts to 
restrict trade in this particular way are directed 
only against our late enemies? Instead of increas- 
ing restrictions on trade, import or export, would it 
not be better to remove those which already handicap 
national effort and international understanding? 

Our coinage and our systems of weights and 
measures are a source of wonder to our friends 
and of cynical amusement to our enemies. No one 
understands them, and they could be amended with- 
out hurting any nation's feelings or interests. These 
weights and measures of ours cheat the home buyer 
and arouse the suspicion of the foreigner. It is 
doubtful whether, in the whole of Britain, in the 
Government Departments, in the schools, or any- 
where else, there is a single person who knows all 
about the weights and measures which afflict us. 
Nearly every county has special standards, and who 
knows off-hand the difference between avoirdupois, 
troy and apothecaries'? How many people even 
know the difference in weight between a peck of pota- 
toes and a peck of peas? 

In Britain there is really no intelligible system. 
Instead, we have an accumulation of methods which 
permit the seller, who has studied his own particular 



118 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

little lot, to trade unfairly with the buyer, who 
cannot hope to acquire an intimate knowledge of all 
the methods of swindling him. All these confusions 
and difficulties affect trade. They influence external 
more than internal trade. The foreign buyer might 
be willing to pay the price if he could find out 
what the price was, and what weight and measure 
he would be entitled to receive. He is not inclined, 
however, to pay the additional price of time wasted 
and annoyance endured over the archaic methods of 
a country he has no interest in beyond his business 
interest. 

Once, in France, I was working out a long-division 
sum. A French friend, looking over my shoulder, 
said : u You English are a wonderful people. Instead 
of working from the left-hand top corner of a sheet 
of paper to the right-hand bottom corner, as you 
do, I should do this." He took a pencil to illustrate 
his point, and on that portion of the paper which I 
had not used, secured the result in an eighth of the 
time, and with a very small use of material. 

It would, of course, be difficult to persuade a peo- 
ple so wedded to tradition and precedence as the 
British are, to sweep away at one stroke all the 
anomalies surrounding an antiquated system; but 
there ought to be no serious objection to making a 
beginning with the coinage. Already they have a 
unit which has world-wide recognition, and which 
lends itself to the decimal system. The sovereign 
is universally known, and it can be divided in such 
a manner as to meet all existing requirements. 



WAGES AND METHODS 119 

Some favour decimalisation, with the penny as a 
unit, but there are trade and sentimental advantages 
in retaining the sovereign. If the sovereign is re- 
tained in its exact form, the other coins, providing 
they make all the combinations necessary, are of less 
importance than the adoption of the principle. Once 
this is in operation, a very few years would suggest 
all the alteration necessary to meet common conven- 
ience. 

Those who oppose the decimal system, say, 
amongst other things, that it would confuse workmen 
and cause them difficulty in fixing or calculating their 
wages. Such a contention is an insult to working- 
class intelligence and capacity. The many thousands 
who have seen service in France, or in the Balkans, 
or in Italy, must already be familiar with this system. 
It is, indeed, even now common to hear sailors and 
soldiers talking of francs and centimes, or kilometres 
and kilogrammes, and one can frequently see that 
they think in these terms. Any person who has 
travelled knows how easy it is to handle and estimate 
coinage based upon the decimal system. 

There are trades which pay for piece work in 
very small fractions of a penny, but on Saturday the 
workman is paid in pounds and shillings, and not in 
sixty-fourths. If he is intelligent enough to reduce 
his sixty-fourths to pence and shillings, he would 
surely find no difficulty in dividing by ten. 

The Lancashire cotton market has already thrown 
over the sixty-fourth, and now the points up and 
down represent hundredths. Lancashire presumably 



120 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

got tired o: the struggle :: : rue buyer's 

measure of value with the sellers, and saved herself 
trouble by adopting an instalment of an easier plan. 
Engineers are everywhere duplicating the English 
and the metric systems. Some of the Colonies al- 
ready use decimals, and others are not inclined to 
wait much longer for Great Britain's decision. It 
will be very awkward indeed if, in Colonial business, 
the Colonies operate one system and the mother 
country cinrruer. 

Tuere :r.:iy never come bo favourable a t : me for 
the change as at present. The war has upset m 
conceptions of value; men who have served abroad 
have acquired practical knowledge of the system 
which is advocated ; business relationships have been 
transformed; and the adoption of the decimal system 
now would cause less disturbance than might be 
caused at some future date. To hesitate is to be 
unready to meet the great need for industrial and 
commercial readjustment, and it is not in the in- 
terests of British trade that, in this particular mat- 
ter, Britain should remain quiescent. 



CHAPTER IX 
HOUSING 

THE facts of the Housing Problem are ob- 
vious. The reasons which underlie the fact 
remain obscured, partly because of the British ten- 
dency to evade, rather than to investigate, and 
partly because politicians, having made mistakes, are 
unable, or afraid, to attempt admission and recti- 
fication. 

The position is so intolerable, however, that 
neither national tendencies nor political susceptibili- 
ties can be long considered. Platitudes and promises 
and confiscatory theories fail to satisfy the returned 
soldier seeking shelter, or the maternal instincts 
of the woman who demands a home for herself and 
the children she expects. 

Why is there a shortage of houses? The more 
frequently we ask ourselves and our political repre- 
sentatives this question, and the more fearlessly we 
face and investigate the answer, the sooner shall 
we escape from our present deplorable position. 

Thirty years ago there was no serious shortage. 
Supply kept pace, at least approximately, with de- 
mand. There were, indeed, thousands of houses to 
let in different parts of the country at rents ranging 
between three and six shillings per week. What 

121 



122 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

has happened? Why have tenants been offering 
premiums to landlords, instead of landlords offering 
inducements to tenants? Has there been any whole- 
sale destruction of houses, or any extraordinary in- 
creases in the numbers of the people, or have social 
and economic or political factors, separately or to- 
gether, conspired to place a considerable portion of 
the community in the position of the Son of Man, 
who "had not where to lay His head" ? 

In Britain there has been no such destruction of 
houses as France and some other theatres of war 
suffered, nor has there been any increase of popula- 
tion beyond the ratios obtaining during the previous 
hundred years. There has, admittedly, been a de- 
sire for better houses, and a constant effort to secure 
the demolition of houses of the back-to-back type, 
but this has always been capable of regulation. It 
becomes necessary, therefore, to look elsewhere for 
causes of shortage and growing costs of provision. 

There can be no intention anywhere of criticising 
in a deprecatory fashion the desire for better houses. 
It is commendable from every point of view. 
Indeed, it is necessary to possess better houses if the 
physical efficiency of the race is to be maintained, and 
under the conditions which obtained thirty years ago, 
it would have been possible to meet the desire for 
improvement with very small additions to rents. One 
shilling per week would have admitted the provision 
of a convenient bathroom. Another shilling would 
have provided a better fitted kitchen and an extra 
bedroom. To-day, from ten shillings to one pound 



HOUSING 123 

or more must be added if such additional accommo- 
dation is supplied. 

It has been said that private enterprise has failed. 
Would it not be more accurate to say that private 
enterprise has been choked by the politicians who 
believe that old methods must be discredited before 
their own theories can be permitted to reach the ex- 
perimental stages. 

At one time it was suggested that the land question 
was at the bottom of the housing situation, and be- 
cause the public believed this they accepted the pro- 
posal, tax land values. 

Cost of land was not the serious obstacle to the 
provision of houses that many people imagined. In 
many provincial areas, having fairly large industrial 
populations, the primary land cost need not have 
been more than £20 per house, and this for houses 
which met the needs of the people and satisfied hy- 
gienic conditions. In this connection it should be 
remembered that garden city theories do not meet 
with universal approval, and are not necessarily more 
healthy than the towns that are more compactly 
planned. To be near one's work is the desirable 
thing for most men, and it is not uncommon to hear 
workmen condemn in unmeasured terms schemes 
which involve long and tiresome and costly journeys 
between the home and the workshop. It is the time 
consumed in these journeys, and their money cost, 
that lies behind many expressions of discontent. The 
expenses attending the application of the garden city 
plan are not confined to transit. Meals bought away 



124 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

from home deplete the family exchequer, and where 
the contributions to this have to be earned, every 
extraneous demand is of grave importance. To 
get home for meals and a good wash is the desire 
of most workmen. It is the housewife's desire also. 
She knows that it is not altogether a good thing for a 
man to acquire the habit of feeding himself, and of 
satisfying other social needs away from his own 
home. 

Those who have aimed at making pictures rather 
than at satisfying needs have incurred grave respon- 
sibilities, and their attempts to place the burden of 
these responsibilities upon land costs, and land laws, 
have intensified rather than diminished the com- 
plexities of the situation. 

The Act of 1909 was declared to be one of the 
things that would free land and increase the possibili- 
ties of building. It has done nothing of the kind. 
Up to the enquiry which led to its emasculation, this 
tax produced £4,100,000 at a cost of £4,600,000. 
It had altogether failed to meet the intentions of its 
sponsor, and it has been a potent factor in destroy- 
ing that confidence without which houses cannot be 
built. 

Legislation in advance of possibility has led to 
increases in the rates until it is not unusual for 
these to be doubled, and instead of investors being 
anxious to build small houses, they are now lending 
their money to the Government, which is wasting 
many thousands of pounds upon experiments and sub- 



HOUSING 125 

sidies which might have gone far to relieve the con- 
gestions that exist. 

To the student who is not handicapped by political 
prejudices, it seems that the simplest way out of the 
difficulty would be to let the investor feel once again 
that there was a safe percentage of interest on his 
money if he put it into small houses. It would be 
cheaper and more expeditious than the amplification 
of expensive Government Departments. Already 
Commissions and Committees of Inquiry and the 
Departments handling these matters must have cost 
the country many millions of pounds, and so far they 
can show very little indeed for their expenditure. 

It is necessary, also, to face the problems arising 
out of increased wages and decreased production. 
The Labour Chairman of an Urban Council, charged 
with the carrying out of a building scheme, has 
found himself faced with the fact that a yard of 
brickwork, which formerly cost 3^. 6J., now costs 
four times that amount. A small Urban Council 
which has advertised for tenders for the erection 
of twenty-four cottages which were to be built w T ithin 
a quarter of a mile of a railway station, which, in 
its turn, is not more than twelve miles from where 
bricks and cement are made, received one tender only 
for eight cottages out of the twenty-four. The 
builder, the only man who ventured to tender at all, 
refused to accept responsibility for more. The price 
tendered was £1,250 per cottage, with the proviso 
that, in the event of labour troubles, higher wages, 



126 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

or higher prices of materials, the local authority 
should pay the additional charges ! 

The economic rent of houses built at this cost, on 
money borrowed at six per cent, cannot be less than 
£75 per year, plus rates and taxes and depreciation. 
Workmen whose wages are governed by the condi- 
tions of export trade cannot pay rentals of this kind. 
The theorist lightly sets aside this difficulty by de- 
manding that the State or the Municipality shall find 
the balance. In effect, this means that the old houses 
will bear the difference between the actual rent and 
the rent that ought to be charged on the new houses. 

Economic rent can be recovered only if houses 
are economically built. None of the houses evolved 
by the Government can ever be let at rents which the 
workpeople can afford to pay out of wages. Those 
who, in Whitehall, plan and muddle, those who, out- 
side Whitehall, plead for subsidies before they can 
build, and the workman who, while demanding the 
best in the way of wages and of housing accommoda- 
tion, fails to give of his best when on building work, 
are all standing in the way of the common good. 
Some of those concerned with building are inept; 
some are actually dishonest. In either case, the 
public debt is increased and the demand for houses 
remains unsatisfied. 

If the money spent on Departments and Inquiries 
had been spent on building houses, there would have 
been happier additions to our cities, our towns, and 
our villages. Nothing like the number of houses 



HOUSING 127 

promised has materialised, and the returned soldier 
has to derive what comfort he can from the assur- 
ance that, whilst he has no house to sleep in, the 
Government has really sanctioned the plans for the 
streets wherein his grandchildren may disport them- 
selves. 

Housing, like meat and coal, demonstrates the 
Government's incapacity for dealing with businesses 
that require personal initiative, rapid movement, 
and economic administration. Throughout the 
whole muddle the Government has acted like the 
charlatan at the village fair. It has given or 
promised palliatives that have no restorative effect 
on the patient, who is represented in this instance by 
the whole of the community. When it has muddled 
a little longer, and involved the State in further 
extraordinary expense, the Government may hark 
back to causes, and may even develop the courage to 
advise the removal of some of them, rather than to 
continue the present unsatisfactory floundering about 
after uneconomic remedies. 

Meanwhile, small houses are liabilities rather than 
assets. There are thousands of women and elderly 
men who, by their own thrift or the thrift of those 
who loved them, have become owners of small 
property, and who would to-day gladly get rid of 
those properties if it would be possible to sell them 
at a price approximating to their original cost. 

The very fact that these poor folk are unable to 
sell their properties and relieve themselves of State- 



128 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

imposed liabilities demonstrates the need for 
thorough investigation and for decisions that are 
taken in the interest of the people rather than at 
the instance of political theorists. 



CHAPTER X 
EDUCATION 

STROLLING down the Boulevard St. Germain, 
I first made acquaintance with the statue of 
Danton. Camelinat, one-time Communist Minister 
of the Mint, was my companion. Together we read 
the inscription culled from the poet's own words: 

"Apres le pain l } education 
Est le premier besoin du peuple" 

After bread? Are we to-day really putting educa- 
tion after, or is the tendency of the times to reverse 
the logical sequence of effort and to put it before 
bread? 

A recent glance at the education programme and 
the Estimates, and a comparison of these with the 
Exchequer requirements, made me wonder. Can we, 
under existing circumstances, afford, not merely the 
cash expenditure, but also the loss of productive 
capacity which the programme of the National 
Union of Teachers and the Minister of Education 
involves? 

Are we putting education after bread? 

It is a dreadful thing to limit opportunities for 
education, but are we really offering equal opportu- 
nities or are we trying to compel equal attainments? 

129 



130 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Have we forgotten the camel and the needle's eye? 
If we have it might be wise to revive the story, 
and to present it in slightly different form by assert- 
ing that it is easier for a sinner to enter heaven than 
for all children to pass through the same educational 
aperture. 

Education may permissibly become an obsession 
with the Ministry in Whitehall. It may permissibly 
become a business with the National Union of 
Teachers. It most certainly ought to become a 
business with the people of Britain. They have 
the right to know the nature and the extent of the 
aims of those who put forward policies and carry 
legislation; they have the right to know what the 
policies cost in terms of taxes, and how far they 
will adversely influence the income and the comfort 
of the home. It is essential, also, to know, at least 
approximately, the extent to which educational fa- 
cilities have been, and will be, taken advantage of. 
It is unfair for enthusiasts to talk of advantages to 
the children when they really mean positions for 
the official. 

It can be at once admitted that thousands of those 
professionally interested in education are selflessly 
sincere. They live and think for their children. 
But — and the qualification applies to all professions 
and occupations — there are others who set the pace 
that will best accommodate their own interests. 
Whether the nation is willing or able to go that 
pace is sometimes a secondary concern. 

The people should spend all they can afford on 



EDUCATION 131 

education. That goes without saying. But is it 
wise for some of the people to add to the debts of 
all the people by providing something that cannot 
be assimilated? 

If the finances of the country were flourishing; if 
the people had a sufficiency of essentials, experiment 
would be both justifiable and desirable; but can any- 
one, laying claim to sanity, contend that the present 
is the time for wasting money or for unwisely con- 
tinuing children at school, who, for economic and 
physiological reasons, might be happier in produc- 
tive employment? 

It is possible to ride a willing horse too hard, and 
it is possible to provoke reaction by ignoring facts. 

There are mutterings everywhere. Some feel 
that, even in the profession, the mere imparting of 
information is mistakenly assumed to represent 
education. There are constant complaints, too, 
against systems which place manual training on too 
low a plane, and there is everywhere, not merely 
criticism of, but fear at the failure to teach citizen- 
ship and self-control. Unfortunately, examples of 
these failures are more common amongst those who 
have been at school since 1900 than they are amongst 
those who, at that date, had left the schools and had 
entered into business. 

Self-education, too, has been almost superseded 
by extraneous and subsidised assistance, and the 
profession is sometimes blamed for this misfortune. 
What has been explored and assimilated by one's 



132 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

own brain continues in conscious effectiveness longer 
than the superimposed lesson. 

Self-education is at once the cheapest and most 
valuable form, but to-day it has few advocates and 
few devotees. Perhaps it is the prodigality and 
inexperience with which facilities are provided that 
breeds indifference. 

If people are too young to work before they are 
eighteen and too old to work after they are forty, 
the productive period of their lives is going to be 
very short as compared with their expectation of 
life. How ordinary folk view the situation is clearly 
shown by the complaint of a woman who said : u Oh, 
yes ! Keep them at school till they are eighteen, see 
them married at nineteen, and find that as they 
marry your liabilities in respect of them increase 
rather than decrease — but where do father and I 
come in?" 

It is said that education is the greatest asset that 
a nation can have. For the moment I am not dis- 
puting this contention, but I am constrained to 
regard such an asset as I should regard a boiler 
without a fire, or an engine without motive force. 
It is only part of the equipment that a man or a 
woman needs. Another, and a precedent part, is 
health, and health is dependent on bread in the first 
instance; and we are surrounding education with 
conditions that make the maintenance of the bread 
supply very difficult. 

No one escapes the reiteration of the platitudinous 
assertion that the State will provide. The State 



EDUCATION 133 

really provides nothing. It merely distributes a part 
of what it has previously extracted from the pockets 
of its members, or what it has borrowed on its mem- 
bers' collective credit. 

I have attended many education conferences, and 
have been charmed and sometimes interested by 
beautiful ideals expressed in eloquent language, but 
to-day I know that ideals, to be realisable, must 
have some association with common sense. 

If the British received full value for the money 
they spent on education they would be the best edu- 
cated people in the world. Unfortunately, the pro- 
foundly important work of training the young has 
been left too much in the hands of the bureaucrat 
and the professional. We have, in consequence, a 
people possessing superficial smatterings, but little 
love of knowledge for its own sake, a people who 
know little about themselves or the facts that govern 
life. 

This is a grave disadvantage, because a people 
trained in the study of their own physical and mental 
capacities, and with reasonably clear ideas concern- 
ing the factors that govern their social and political 
existences, must take precedence over the nations less 
efficiently trained. 

Existence is governed by laws we do not make, 
and cannot amend, and which we only imperfectly 
understand. We speak loosely of these laws as 
natural laws, but so badly do we apprehend them 
and their irresistibility that we often lightheartedly 



134 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

disregard them, and are pitifully astonished when 
the inevitable penalties are exacted. 

The common tendency is to place blame for penal- 
ties on every set of circumstances except the right 
one. Generally we blame the Government for our 
troubles, and we create more governments to cure 
them. We rarely admit that most of our troubles 
are due to individual ignorances. 

Had each of us known as much as we ought to 
have known about physique and mentality, there 
would have been no need to discourse eloquently 
upon the dangers of a C 3 population. Had we 
known as much about the laws that govern our social 
existences as we ought to have known, the present 
industrial and commercial situation would have 
developed less dangerously. 

The masses of the people ought to have been able 
to differentiate between actual and nominal values; 
between the real and the unreal; but even amongst 
those who have passed through the superior schools, 
and who would be offended if it were suggested that 
they lacked education, there is a lamentable lack of 
knowledge or understanding concerning vital things. 

What we have, we must endure. Attempts effec- 
tively to change and improve the passing generation 
will have disappointing results. The coming gen- 
eration, however, may be helped, and there are wise 
men who are desirous of helping the young by first 
training the teachers of the young in the matters 
that are vital to human interests. 

The pressure of after-war problems will compel 



EDUCATION 135 

the Trade Unionists and others to readjust their 
thoughts and ideas, and it may well be that they 
will begin with the schools. 

During the last fifty years, changes in the methods 
of production, combined with competitive demands, 
have destroyed in almost every occupation the old- 
fashioned system of apprenticeship. The employer 
is no longer under an obligation to teach the princi- 
ples and practices of trades, nor is the boy com- 
pelled to remain at one occupation for the number 
of years necessary to turn him into a skilled work- 
man. It is no use bewailing the change, or assuming 
that it is altogether for the bad. Change, or at 
least movement, is essential to the continuance of 
things; change is prejudicial mainly when those 
affected by it lack the sense of appreciation and the 
quality of adaptability. 

If in the majority of occupations the responsibility 
of teaching has passed from the employer, it is 
imperative that this responsibility should be assumed 
by the State through its schools. 

The trained workman is an asset to the commu- 
nity, and upon the community should rest the burden 
of the cost of his training. A share of this should 
be placed upon the local authorities, and arrange- 
ments for training should not be permissive but 
obligatory. Experience proves that where schemes 
are wholly permissive, the advanced and patriotic 
authority bears an unfair share of the cost of train- 
ing whereby the whole community benefits. 

It is often alleged that the chief obstacles of 



136 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

efficient industrial training are those raised by the 
Trade Unions. Twenty years ago, there was some 
truth in this allegation; but to-day the Unions are 
recognising the value of the trained man, not only 
to the State, but to their own movement. It becomes 
increasingly obvious to them that the inefficient or 
the ill-trained are the most readily exploited. The 
man who is sure of himself and confident in his 
ability to perform the task he undertakes is in an 
infinitely better position than the man who is con- 
scious of inferiority, and who is always afraid to 
attempt new processes. 

Throughout the Trade Union movement there is, 
to-day, a growing unanimity in favour of raising the 
school age. This tendency can only be justified if 
the curriculum becomes less academic, and all con- 
cerned concentrate upon making the school an ante- 
room in which lives are prepared for the world's 
more strenuous and wider functions. 

Up to the present, the schools of Great Britain 
have not become the centres of local life; yet this 
is just what they ought to be. 

In some schools, particularly in America, where 
social experiments are received with greater toler- 
ance than is accorded them here, the school has 
become, to a very great extent, the centre of the 
community; its playgrounds, its baths, its gymna- 
sium, and even the school itself being used by the 
parents as well as by the children. In these schools, 
what is termed "vocational training" forms an 
integral part of the curriculum. They enlist the 



EDUCATION 137 

co-operation of the Trade Unionists, and all the 
trade instructors are members of their respective 
organisations. 

In these American schools, the manual training 
prior to the age of 1 6 is largely for general edu- 
cative purposes, and much of it is given in the purely 
elementary schools. It is desirable that this prac- 
tice should be developed, or that the elementary and 
the secondary school should be more frequently 
organised under the same roof. If such were the 
case, many more pupils would pass through from the 
elementary to the secondary school. The transfer- 
ence from one school to another, the breaking of old 
associations and ideas, disturbs the child's life, and 
in too many cases, involves the parents in unwise, 
and often unnecessary, expenditure. 

I have seen the struggles of the parents to provide 
the boy who has won his way into the secondary 
school (and of whom they are very proud) with 
the things which the Governors of the secondary 
schools sometimes regard as necessities — football 
shoes, cricket flannels, etc. These contributions for 
sports and games are beloved by the teacher, and 
without them, the boy feels very unhappy; but when 
they are obtained at the expense of the other chil- 
dren in the family, they are very undesirable. 

If the relationship between the elementary and 
the secondary school could be closer, if the break 
between old associations and new ones were not so 
great; if the boy could occasionally come into touch 
with his old companions and under the influence of 



138 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

his old master, there would be less of the restlesness 
which leads him to desire immediate industrial occu- 
pation rather than secondary training. 

There are many men engaged in the social move- 
ment who are giving time and thought to the admin- 
istration of national education. Most of them are 
prepared in the truest sense to make the schools 
national assets. Hitherto, they have lacked the 
effective support of those in whose interests they 
have been labouring. 

The competitive problems with which the country 
is faced are such that serious suffering and loss will 
result, unless the best is made of all its assets. 
Even those who fear the undue influence of the mere 
bookman, admit that the human asset is the most 
important of all. 

The losses and extravagances of the past seven 
years must restrict immediate educational efforts. 
Only that which will assist the present and the immi- 
nent future can be attempted. Foundations will be 
more the national concern than superstructures, but 
there is no reason why the foundations should be 
bad. Economy and practicability must be the watch- 
words of those who would educate the people, but 
who are reluctantly compelled to put existence 
before adornment; bread before erudition. 

As I study the programmes of to-day, and their 
probable cost to the community, I wonder whether 
Danton smiles down upon us sorrowfully or sar- 
castically, and I seem to hear his spirit muttering, 
"Apres le pain. . . ." 



CHAPTER XI 
WAR AND ARMIES 

THERE should no longer be any illusions con- 
cerning war. It is stupid, barbarous, illogical, 
and wasteful. It arrests artistic progress, impedes 
the development of civilisation, and destroys a very 
high percentage of the virile and highly moral man- 
hood of those nations which are involved. All the 
advantages that militarists declare are achieved by 
war can be achieved by other means and with far 
less expenditure of effort and money, and with infi- 
nitely less suffering for the people whose homesteads 
are overrun and destroyed. 

The figures relating to the cost of war are beyond 
the computation of men; it is said that the Allies in 
the late war spent two thousand million pounds 
sterling by the time the war had been in operation 
twelve months. These figures, stretched across a 
placard, look imposing and create an impression of 
dizziness, but never of apprehension. Even the 
intelligent business man failed utterly to understand 
what two thousand millions really meant, or what 
science and art and civilisation could accomplish for 
the world if two thousand millions were set aside for 
this purpose. 

139 



140 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

The ghastliness of modern war has not yet been 
depicted. Governments have, everywhere, hidden 
from the sight of the world the misery and filth and 
pain and terror endured by those who, having no 
personal animosity, are forced to maim and slay. 
The people may cheer the pomp and pageantry of 
war; the observant may see the little groups of 
women at the street corners, quietly crying over the 
letters that notify of the death or the maiming of 
those who are dear to them; they may shake their 
heads in sympathy when they look upon the groups 
of children who are fatherless, but they see nothing 
of the more horrible facts of war, or if they see, 
see only incompletely and as through a mist. 

If they knew and understood the actual facts, 
together with the cost, there would be no more war 
in those nations which call themselves civilised, and 
which have any capacity for expressing the demo- 
cratic will. 

Militarists and their apologists frequently talk 
of the moral effects of war, though they seldom 
attempt to define their conceptions of morality as 
applied to war. Morality has been roughly defined 
as the science of right living, and when militarists 
exalt the war god, one is inclined to ask how they 
associate pillage, rapine, and murder with morality 
of any kind. 

It has been contended that war would never again 
offer such examples of savagery as those which sully 
the pages of history. The late war has swept all 
such contentions aside, and has demonstrated the 



WAR AND ARMIES 141 

possibility of horror being piled upon horror even 
by nations who boastfully claim possession of the 
highest forms of modern culture. 

As in the days of Atilla, unoffending villages have 
been razed, helpless non-combatants outraged and 
murdered, and artistic monuments swept to the 
ground in one mass of fire and destruction. No 
influence, not even the religious influence, has been 
strong enough to restrain that barbarism which war 
always involves. 

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and 
sufficient for our time is the evil wrought by one 
war. As in the past, so it was in the late war; so 
it will be in the future wars; every ideal abased, 
every business enterprise checked, every fraternal 
conception swept aside, and the world made poorer 
in wealth, in spirit, and in aspiration. 

War is essentially the expression of ignorance and 
avarice, and of those who promote war, nothing but 
evil may be anticipated, i^mongst those who actually 
make war, there has, however, during centuries of 
conflict, arisen certain standards of honour and con- 
duct, and because their acceptance might mitigate 
the sufferings of neutrals and non-combatants, 
various Hague conventions have sought to crystallise 
these standards. 

During the late war we had, unfortunately, to 
see these carefully elaborated codes and standards 
swept aside, sacred obligations and treaties con- 
temptuously ignored, and a ghastly "frightfulness" 
increased. Fear everywhere was more acutely felt, 



142 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

and organised outrage, alike unreasonable and inde- 
fensible, was the natural result. 

The loss of life and property does not complete 
the sacrifice. Dearest liberties of thought, expres- 
sion, and movement are abrogated; not merely 
during hostilities, but afterwards and always. 

Savagery and civilisation have always reacted 
upon each other, and will continue so to react. The 
higher forms of civilisation must, unfortunately, 
continue to defend themselves against the lower. 
National ambitions and the desires for territorial 
and industrial aggrandisement may be stupidly 
wicked, but they exist. 

Jean Block had many adherents when he argued 
that war's frightfulness would end war. The 
museum at Lucerne, which was devoted to illustra- 
tions of war's machinery and effects, led thousands 
of tourists to hope that horror would be an effective 
deterrent. Block may be right; the adherents and 
tourists may be justified in their opinions — but not 
yet. 

The war just waged excelled all other wars for 
destructive frightfulness and ghastly bestiality, but 
it did not usher in the end of world war. The moral 
sense of the world has yet to grow and to attain 
international and interracial approximation, while 
the power and understanding of the masses must 
be greater and more intelligently applied, before 
such a consummation can be reached. 

We can never even go back — at least, not with 
safety — to the old army constitution and construe- 



WAR AND ARMIES 143 

tion. Change is inevitable, increase probable. There 
were people who believed that at the end of the late 
war, formulae would be invented which would make 
future war impossible. Such people ignore the 
teachings of history and the differing grades of 
contemporaneous civilisation. It is nearly 2,000 
years since Christ preached peace on earth. In the 
light of existing and immediately proximate events, 
can any man say how far this preaching has been 
effective, and when the ideal He set up will be 
attained? 

Even America has already translated the lessons 
of the late war into additions to her army and navy. 
The millennium may come ; all men may live together 
as brethren; peaceful tendencies may develop in 
accelerating ratios, but humanity has many morasses 
to cross before this goal is reached. 

If this be the case, if we are to retain larger 
armies and navies, we should now be considering 
their construction and control and the part to be 
allotted to democracy. 

It is the habit of Labour, even highly organised 
Labour, to discuss effects rather than to anticipate 
them. It will rail against the bias of Capital and 
the ineptitude of Government Departments, but its 
opponents are calculating upon Labour's failure to 
combine its resources for the purpose of reorgan- 
ising, not merely the structure, but the outlook of 
those Departments. 

Labour, as distinguished from the political 
adventurers who strut upon Labour's stage, ought 



144 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

to disappoint its opponents by turning from inter- 
esting, but unessential, point, of demarcation and 
internal co-ordination to the co-ordination of its own 
strength and the contemplation, not of impossible 
ideals, but of practical utilities. 

The lessons of history, the duties of citizenship, 
the art of government, the obligations and commit- 
ments of Empire, are subjects well within the intel- 
lectual capacity of thousands of the lower-paid 
inhabitants of Britain. What these thousands lack 
is self-confidence and educative inclination. The 
former will come with experience, and the latter by 
the wise exercise of already existing opportunities. 

There is no position in the civil, the colonial, or 
the foreign services, or in the navy and army, to 
which the poorest citizen ought not to aspire. The 
fact that he has hitherto been excluded from the 
higher grades of these services offers no justification 
for his continued exclusion, yet to suggest that the 
Trade Unions should have a representative on the 
Army Council would probably stagger the Labour 
movement as much as it would shock the Army 
Council. 

But why not? Labour, in the very nature of 
things, finds ninety per cent, of the blood and sinew 
of the army; it makes the equipment and munitions, 
and it is mainly responsible for the creation of those 
financial resources without which armies are impo- 
tent, and, with equal training, it could hardly make 
more mistakes than are made by the classes which 
have hitherto monopolised control, and if the con- 



WAR AND ARMIES 145 

dition of its representation was the promotion of 
military efficiency and moral, no possible harm could 
accrue. 

It is safe to assume that the British army of the 
future will be larger than that little band of heroes 
who sought to stem the German rush through 
Flanders. It will probably be built on a territorial 
basis, and efforts will certainly be made in the future, 
as they have been made in the past, to introduce 
permanent compulsory service. Equity and policy 
demand alike that in this country Labour shall not 
only serve, but shall have opportunities of directing 
and leading, not only in the Territorial Forces, but 
at headquarters and in the field. 

One of the finest soldiers in the armies of the 
late war was a workman's son. He was quite young, 
a great scholar, a good soldier and a modest gentle- 
man, but nothing short of a miracle could place him 
on the Headquarters Staff. A thousand traditions 
and a thousand interests opposed him. No one 
argues that this should be, but everyone knows it is. 
The interests of Empire demand extraordinary 
changes ; the competitive demands of to-morrow can 
only be met by the utilisation of the best brains and 
the most virile constitutions. An army will, at least 
for many generations, remain an adjunct of every 
sovereign state, and the British army must be organ- 
ised on a basis which gives the best opportunities to 
the best men. 

All men should serve a period in the ranks. 
Aptitude displayed should be noted and developed, 



146 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

and promotion should depend upon capacity and 
devotion to duty as well as upon scholastic achieve- 
ments. It follows as a natural consequence that pay, 
at least for the lower grades, must be adequate, and 
the private, no matter what arm of the Service he 
serves with, must start with a good basic rate. 

It has been said that our Expeditionary Force was 
little but good. None of us want a great standing 
army, but all of us must realise that the smaller the 
army, the better it must be. 

Open the ranks, offer opportunities, pay a reason- 
able wage, give all the people a chance to participate 
in its construction and leadership, and it will be 
possible to create an army second to none, willing 
to fight, willing to die if need be, anyhow, at any 
time, and in any place, for the Homeland, for its 
Dominions, for its Dependencies, or for its honour. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SOLDIER AND LABOUR 

FROM the earliest days when nation went to war 
against nation, the problem of the discharged 
and disabled man has been growing in gravity. 
When most men worked on the land and were, in 
addition, parts of a feudal system, the problem was 
less intense than it is to-day, when millions of men 
have been withdrawn from industry to be killed, 
or maimed, or to find on return that the course of 
industry has changed, and their value, outside the 
army, is considerably less than it was before they 
took to soldiering. The Peninsular War, the 
Crimean War, and the South African War, each 
saw the accentuation of the difficulties facing the 
soldier who had been an industrialist. After the 
South African War we frequently said, "Never 
again." Never again would we permit the man who 
had fought for his country to be subjected to per- 
petual handicaps in the world of labour. When 
Germany, in 19 14, plunged the whole world into 
war, and wt in Britain endeavoured to augment our 
armies by voluntary means, we repeated the good 
resolutions and the promises that had been adopted 
by our fathers and grandfathers in previous wars. 
We said that the workman who left his job at the 

147 



148 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

call of country, who offered his life that the 
integrity of his country might remain intact, should 
not suffer as his predecessors had suffered. If he 
sacrificed in order that the men who were too old to 
fight or too feeble to fight, and the women and 
children whose business was not to fight, should 
escape the horrors that accompany invasion, then 
all would unite to secure his future, should he be 
fortunate enough to return. 

We loaded our patriotic speeches with references 
to the manner in which we ought to perform our 
duties to those who returned broken from the wars, 
and it was felt that the spiritual awakening resulting 
from the war would enable all national interests to 
unite in safeguarding the soldiers' interests. Long 
before the war had finished, it became evident that 
selfishness would predominate; that those who had 
remained at home, either through infirmity or 
because of interest, would seek to hold fast to all 
the advantages that unexampled opportunity and a 
restricted labour market had given them. Employ- 
ers said : u We are exceedingly sorry for the disabled 
man. We think he ought to be offered every oppor- 
tunity for re-association with industry; but, unfor- 
tunately, our industry is entirely unsuitable for the 
disabled man. He ought to go over the way, and 
seek employment in the workshops of our competi- 
tors." 

The surprised and harassed soldier turned then to 
his fellow workmen, in only too many cases to be 
met with the same contention. "Yes, you ought to 



THE SOLDIER AND LABOUR 149 

be found employment, or, if you cannot be found 
employment, the State must take care of you, your 
children, and your interests. Unfortunately, our 
Trade Union, or our trade, already has one or two 
per cent, of unemployment, and we cannot make 
room for you. You have our best wishes, however, 
and we hope some other trade, about which you 
know nothing, may be able to absorb you. If this 
is found to be impossible, we will pass resolutions 
demanding sustenance from Parliament." 

Not everywhere has this spirit been manifested. 
There have been many and notable exceptions, but 
it is impossible to deny the tendency in some direc- 
tions not to meet the position of the discharged and 
disabled soldier. 

The assumption of the mass, that the passing of 
resolutions demanding support from Parliament 
meets the case, is entirely unjustifiable. It cannot 
be too clearly stated to the workman that he has 
got to work with the ill-trained and the disabled, 
or work for them. He can either assist them to 
employment, or he can increase his own production 
till it is sufficient to keep himself and the man 
returned from the war. Nor can it be too strongly 
stated to the employer that, unless he makes 
arrangements for employment and the payment of 
reasonable wages, he will have to pay additional 
taxes. 

The problem is admittedly bristling with difficul- 
ties. It can be better solved round the conference 
table than on the platform. There are questions 



150 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

affecting the value of the labour that the disabled 
can give ; the extent to which the pension may affect 
wages; the extent to which the inclusion of the dis- 
abled may reduce the collective value of output; and 
the additional liability that may fall upon the 
employer in respect of sickness and accident. 

Up to the present, there has been no decision as 
to whether the pension given to a soldier is given 
in respect of services rendered, or in respect of 
liabilities incurred. If it has been given in respect 
of services already rendered, there can be no taking 
it into consideration when estimating wages. If, on 
the other hand, it is given in respect of disabilities 
incurred, then it may be argued that the pension 
should be taken into consideration when attempts are 
being made to determine the wage value of the 
disabled. 

If the country was rolling in wealth, if its 
standards of production had developed instead of 
deteriorated as a consequence of the war, if the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer found no difficulty in 
making the national income meet the national ex- 
penditure, the whole matter could be dismissed 
lightly; but in face of the circumstances that exist, 
it may be necessary for the soldier to remember 
that he is also a citizen, and that whatever tends to 
overweight or disrupt the Empire, tends to destroy 
his chances of getting any recompense at all. From 
a bankrupt nation he can obtain neither employment 
nor pension. Rhetoric will not solve his problem. 



THE SOLDIER AND LABOUR 151 

Hard — very hard — and unpleasant facts may have 
to be faced. 

The Government, struggling with difficulties, bur- 
dened by promises, made probably in perfect good 
faith, has endeavoured to meet the situation. First 
it hoped, as every decent man and woman hoped, 
that mutual arrangements between associations of 
employers and associations of employed would them- 
selves seek the industrial salvation of the demo- 
bilised and the disabled. When many derelicts were 
left, it was compelled to move, but it is difficult to see 
how the Government itself can solve the problem. 
It will not be easy to give effect to any regulations 
it may make, because some occupations lend them- 
selves to absorption, others do not. Some groups 
have distinguished themselves by generosity, others 
by selfishness. It will be hard to force men into 
unsatisfactory occupations, or to further impinge on 
the good will of those who have already tried to do 
their duty in this matter. 

However great the difficulty, it must be overcome. 
The men have taken the risks; the vast majority of 
them are really decent fellows, who prefer to earn 
their corn. They hate anything in the shape of 
pauperism, and they don't differentiate between the 
pauperism of the Board of Guardians and the pau- 
perism of the Labour Exchange. They would like 
to work, not only because work would enable them 
to keep themselves and to maintain their self-respect 
and dignity, but because it is impossible to be happy 
without work of some sort. 



152 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

In employment they may forget, or at least 
remember with less poignancy, malformation and 
disfigurement that so many of them suffer. 

Is it too late for this task of honour to be per- 
formed without the compulsion of the State? Is 
it too late to avoid the inclusion, amongst other 
burdens, of the inefficiency and expense of a State 
Department for the control of the employment of 
the disabled? 

For my own part, I would a thousand times rather 
that Capital and Labour should frankly shoulder the 
debt they owe, and seek themselves to liquidate it, 
without the compulsion of the State, for the State's 
methods are always costly, and too frequently they 
are also demoralising. 

Just as the soldier looked towards the time when 
his life would no longer be controlled by the King's 
Regulations, the civilian is looking for the restora- 
tion of those civil liberties which he never properly 
appreciated till they were seriously circumscribed. 

During the war the State, of necessity, invaded 
the spheres of life which, in normal times, are 
rightly regarded as being outside its functions. It 
exercised the right, when threatened by grave mili- 
tary danger, to use and sacrifice the lives of its 
members. It laid its iron hand upon those who 
remained in civil occupations, directing them hither 
and thither, often against their real inclinations, in 
the hope of extracting maximum production. Em- 
ployers were compelled to close, curtail or reorganise 
their respective businesses, while workpeople were 



THE SOLDIER AND LABOUR 153 

compelled to register at exchanges they detested, 
to work at specified tasks in specified localities, and 
for specified employers. 

During a crisis like the nation was then passing 
through, only a fool or a traitor would make much 
ado about measures taken for the national safety 
or defence. Any attempt, however, to perpetuate 
such a control of human effort and affairs, and to 
continue such restrictions of liberty after the war, 
will be resisted, and men who supported whatever 
the Government did in a time of common danger 
will be found leading common upheavals against 
bureaucratic control. 

Social science is not, like mathematics, an exact 
science. The deepest student may find the most 
carefully calculated prediction incontinently upset; 
but amongst a nation so temperamentally individu- 
alistic as the British, he may safely count upon most 
violent reactions from bureaucracy. 

During the war the State interfered extensively 
with Labour. The result has been to transfer 
Labour antagonism from the Capitalist to the State. 
Strikes, which in pre-war days were purely anti- 
Capital, have now become anti-Government. The 
State, having partially superseded the private em- 
ployer, Labour, when it fights, must perforce fight 
with the State, until all things are once more nor- 
mal. The ultimate and logical outcome of such a 
situation is too obvious to need statement. 

The world hardly appreciated the extent of the 
State's incursions into the affairs of labour, or the 



154 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

vitiating effects of these incursions on the spirit and 
power of the Trade Unions. The State professes to 
provide situations for the unemployed; to supply 
sickness and medical benefits ; usually at a cost many 
times greater than that of the Unions handling simi- 
lar business; it pays unemployment benefit; it also 
intervenes in disputes and fixes wages. 

What is there left for the Unions to do? Why 
should any man belong to one which advertises its 
intention to proceed on the old non-political and 
non-religious lines? Why should he pay contribu- 
tions to provide service and benefits which the State 
offers for nothing? Why should he be bound by 
rules and agreements, or follow any Trade Union 
leader, if his interests or inclinations, or some self- 
seeking politician suggests other courses? Why, 
indeed? 

As with Trade Unions, so it was with those who 
directed industry or commerce. So long as the 
Government orders and controls the Government 
also pays, and pays in cash and destroyed initiative. 
During the war, the costliness of operations was lost 
sight of in the multitude of other considerations. 
To-day it has become obvious, and the fight for 
economy and efficiency is sometimes obscuring the 
national duty to the returned soldiers. 

It is unreasonable to expect the highest and 
greatest successes in businesses controlled or adjusted 
by Government. They are much more likely to be 
found in concerns where the losses fall on those who 



THE SOLDIER AND LABOUR 155 

make mistakes. If the head of a private business 
errs in judgment or in action, the penalty falls upon 
himself or upon his shareholders. If an executive 
officer of a business run by the State makes a mis- 
take, the State pays and the officer continues to 
qualify for his pension. 

There is, as a matter of experience and necessity, 
less initiative and enterprise in Government concerns 
than in private ones. The former is tempted to 
wait for political measures; it is the safer course. 
The latter must anticipate and act in order to succeed 
against the world's competition. 

When the war ended, Great Britain was one 
nation amongst many whose wits and practices had 
been sharpened by grim circumstance. All the 
nations were faced with the need for production 
and facile exchange. The least adaptable was in 
danger of suffering most. In such a situation, it was 
essential that the industrial and commercial enter- 
prise of the British should have the freest possible 
scope. Governments can create commercial oppor- 
tunities, but they invite jobbery and failure when 
they seek to exploit them. 

Difficulty and complexity must not appal those 
who are determined to set Britain free of her obli- 
gations to her ex-service men and the bureaucratic 
control of her affairs. The disabled must be assisted 
to maintain themselves, and the able demobilised 
must be allowed to share whatever employment they 
are fitted for. Industry and commerce and men 



156 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

must get free of Government interference, if the 
people are to recover balanced conceptions concern- 
ing obligations and wages and profits and national 
prosperity. 



CHAPTER XIII 
SYNDICALISM 

TO-DAY, it is difficult for even the initiated to 
discover the operative differences between 
trade unionism, syndicalism, communism and social- 
ism. The revolutionary alchemist has been at 
work, but instead of transmuting the baser into the 
finer, he has adopted exactly the opposite policy. 
Some men profess adherence to all four forms of 
social activity, and associate themselves with the 
propaganda of each group, and that, despite the 
impossibility of finding agreement between funda- 
mental factors. 

Trade Unionism itself is a phase of capitalism. 
Together they stand or fall, as parts of the same 
system. The end of the capitalist involves the end 
of the trade unionist. The latter has no probability 
of existence if the former dies. Trade Unionism 
came into existence to remedy the evils of capitalism, 
and if capitalism is destroyed, there will be no more 
incidental evils to remedy, and no trade unions will 
be needed. The revolutionary government of 
Russia has, apparently, accepted the logic of this 
contention, for it has treated the real trade unionist 
almost as savagely as it treated the capitalist. The 
moment trade unionists begin to reason logically, 

157 



158 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

they will discover how fundamentally they differ 
from the other "isms," particularly syndicalism. 

Socialism, at least in theory, stands for the State, 
and subordinates the rights of individuals to those 
of the community. It would, again in theory, pro- 
vide work for all and compel all to work, not for 
the pleasure or the profit of the worker himself, 
but for the benefit of the State. 

Syndicalism differs from both, and may be de- 
scribed as the "All for us" movement as applied to 
production. The workers in given industries are to 
own and control the sources, the materials, the tools, 
the products, the distribution, the profits and the 
losses. Not for the common good, be it marked, 
but for the particular good of those engaged in the 
particular occupation. The mines for the miners; 
the railways for the railwaymen; the bricks for the 
brickmakers, and the beer for the brewers, are 
superficially attractive contentions. Materialised 
and put into practice, these contentions would effect 
results in which the absurd and the tragic struggle 
for predominance. 

Syndicalism, as generally advocated, implies the 
right of the individual or the group to cease work at 
any time, or under any circumstances, and at any 
cost to the individual, the trade union, or the com- 
munity. It has been hailed as the new gospel and 
the source and realisation of social salvation. Its 
devotees openly advocate sabotage, or the destruc- 
tion of working tools, raw materials, private prop- 
erty and commercial opportunities. There is noth- 



SYNDICALISM 159 

ing new about its conceptions or about the methods 
of its present-day adherents. Its main weapon, 
sabotage, was once called rattening. Rattening, 
which was rampant in Britain about a hundred years 
ago, differed from sabotage in that it had no con- 
sciously political objective. It was discarded by our 
great-grandfathers because they found it to be more 
expensive and less effective than other and more 
intelligent forms of trade union activity. The con- 
cession of the right to combine, together with the 
removal of many legal disabilities, opened up new 
and better ways, and the complete reversion to obso- 
lete localism which sabotage and syndicalism em- 
body, has become impossible in communities which 
do any thinking. 

It is claimed that syndicalism would remove 
every social disability, and it proposes to achieve this 
result by temporarily disregarding human needs and 
by utterly disregarding industrial contracts and by 
promoting strikes. Whether these strikes are of 
long or short duration is of minor importance. The 
desirable thing, from the point of view of their 
organisers, is to make them general, and to arrest, 
or at least endanger, anything in the shape of con- 
tinuous industrial enterprise. They rely for the 
success of their strike activity at worst upon fear, 
and at best upon aimless and irresponsible enthusi- 
asm. The last thing these wild men give credit to, 
is experienced sagacity. 

Contracts, industrial or otherwise, impose obliga- 
tions, embody advantages and disadvantages, privi- 



160 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

leges and duties. The obligations involved are 
supposed to be mutual and equal, but admittedly 
they are not necessarily so, and where the balance 
of mutuality is not equal, or where conditions of 
unanticipated irksomeness develop, there always 
arises the question of whether the contract should 
be completed or fully observed, or whether some 
modification should be sought. To preach disregard 
of all industrial contracts and agreements is, how- 
ever, to preach very dangerous doctrine and to call 
down upon the general population consequences — 
dissimilar in character perhaps, but fully as evil — 
as those involved even in the keeping of the bad 
bargains. 

Disregard of agreements must, of necessity, cause 
loss of confidence and credit. It should never be 
forgotten that Britain depends for her safety upon 
confidence and credit, as well as upon her Navy and 
Army. Any dislocation of her industry must react 
upon her credit by compelling her to exchange 
securities held in other countries for commodities 
which, apart from industrial dislocation, she could 
produce for herself. Confidence and credit are 
primary factors, without which organised produc- 
tion and commerce are impossible. Disregard of 
industrial agreements must tend to increase the ratio 
of unemployment, and accentuate the possibility of 
ultimate industrial and commercial disaster. 

Ethical considerations may sometimes demand 
the repudiation of agreements; for example, where 
one side has benefited by gross misrepresentation 



SYNDICALISM 161 

of facts; but political exigencies, individual preju- 
dices, or local irritability, never offer sufficient reason 
for anything so drastic, or so certain to injure work- 
ing class interests. 

Syndicalists are contradictory, as well as futile. 
While they demand freedom for the individual or 
for the group to strike, without reference to the 
general interest, and declaim against central control, 
they insistently preach the general strike. No man 
experienced in industrial conditions would like to 
insist that under all circumstances the general strike 
was anathema. Occasions may arise when a com- 
plete stoppage offers the only means of righting 
great wrongs, or of avoiding great evils. But even 
in great crises, a general strike ought only to be 
undertaken after all other methods have failed, after 
all facts have been ascertained, all interests consulted 
and unified, and all chances and consequences care- 
fully calculated. To suggest that action modifying 
the trend and operation of economic factors, vio- 
lently disturbing the normal expectations of industry, 
and involving millions in immediate unemployment 
should be undertaken with the rapidity w T hich is 
typified by the word lightning, and dependent upon 
the will of a single individual or of a group like the 
Council of Action, is monstrous and foreign to every 
principle of business and democracy. 

The strike weapon has always been in the hands 
of the trade unionist and has been regarded as a 
legitimate weapon. The syndicalist strike is, how- 
ever, outside and beyond ordinary trade union prin- 



162 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

ciples. The difference between the two affects both 
conception and objective. Strikes entered upon by 
trade unionists acting as such, presuppose the ulti- 
mate resumption of work in the industry, and under 
the existing conditions of manufacture and trading. 
At the back of every syndicalist strike there lies the 
determination to change the foundation upon which 
business is based, and to substitute occupational for 
individual incentives. Under syndicalism, the unions 
would own everything belonging to their own trades, 
including the trade unionists. The latter would own 
nothing beyond the privilege of working for the 
union and the possibility of sharing whatever results 
accrued from its bargains with other unions. Since 
the trade unions exist to protect the workers' trade 
interests, it logically follows that all attempts to 
overthrow the industrial system upon which trade 
and trade unionism is based, are alien and inimical. 
Strikes become alien to trade unionism when they 
divorce wages questions from considerations of mar- 
ket power, i. e. the power to pay wages, which comes 
from the power to sell produce ; when they discount 
the possibility of the resumption of work by en- 
couraging the burning of factories, or the flooding 
of mines, or other forms of material damage; when 
they manifest no conception of, or provision for, 
the general rights of workers who are not syndi- 
calists. The destruction of a basic industry like that 
of coal offers an example of what is meant, for this 
must carry with it the destruction of dependent 
industries such as steel, iron, tinplates, and the other 



SYNDICALISM 163 

mechanically powered occupations upon which mil- 
lions of British workers depend for bread. 

Labour, at least in Britain, is not yet sufficiently 
organised to warrant optimistic conclusions concern- 
ing even the possibility, let alone the results, of a 
general strike precipitated by syndicalists. Even if 
the contrary in respect of organisation was true, if 
every man and every woman eligible to join the trade 
union movement took up membership, if all units 
were brought together and brigaded, if financial 
resources were sufficient and accessible, if all jeal- 
ousies were overcome and central direction accepted, 
then, paradoxical as it may seem, everything obtain- 
able through syndicalism and the general strike could 
be independently obtained. Success in industrial 
movements may be achieved, but success is for the 
army with captains, and not for the leaderless mob, 
and lasting success is achieved only after thoughtful 
and continuous preparation and effort and apprecia- 
tion of the real capacity of the forces it is proposed 
to embroil. 

The trade union movement ought to interrogate 
the syndicalists whose folly and criminality are 
bringing Britain to the edge of that slope which 
leads to industrial and political destruction. It 
ought to know the position of the syndicalists and 
the destination towards which they really travel. 
Promises and programmes ought no longer to suf- 
fice. The trade union movement ought to know 
whether it is fighting for the economic advancement 
of its units; whether it is resisting attacks upon rights 



164 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

and principles, or whether it is being used and 
abused by irresponsible revolutionaries of the middle 
class; whether its future will be based upon a system 
which, imperfect though it is, offers opportunities, 
incentives and elasticity, or whether it will experi- 
ment with a system which actually begins by locking 
occupations in separate departments and claiming 
for each department primary and exclusive owner- 
ship of all it handles or produces. 



CHAPTER XIV 
COMMUNISM IN RUSSIA AND BRITAIN 

THE Communist, whether he resides in Moscow 
or Glasgow, seldom sees beyond the little 
circle of his friends and sympathisers. What ap- 
pears to be possible to the minds within the sphere 
of his personal association, appears to be possible in 
every country and amongst every type of people. 
He never realises that theory and practice are two 
different things; nor does he realise that theory, 
which might be applied in some parts of the world 
with comparative success, would only result in tragic 
catastrophe were it put into operation somewhere 
else. 

Moscow is to-day the Mecca of the Communist. 
Always he turns his eyes towards this political holy 
of holies, and always reverently accepts the crude 
"obiter dicta" of the cruel and ill-formed autocrats 
who to-day dominate Russia. 

Perhaps Russia offered the best testing ground in 
the world for renewed experiments in Communism. 
Ninety per cent, of the people lived upon the land, 
and even before the war they were more or less 
self-contained and self-supporting. Unhappily, they 
were also mainly illiterate, and, being temperamen- 
tally prone to adopt flamboyant ideas, they were 

165 



166 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

easily influenced by Communist propaganda, which 
here possessed a better chance of achieving success 
than in any other nation. 

Behind the fact that they were almost equally 
independent of import and export trade, there lay 
the political incentive of centuries of autocratic and 
scandalous government. The people were indeed 
ripe for change, yet in spite of all the territorial 
and economic and political advantages which the 
Russian Communists had, their efforts have resulted 
in widespread misery, in death, and in gigantic politi- 
cal failure. 

Not long ago, I discussed the situation with an 
Englishman whose life had been spent in Russia in 
the conduct of a business founded there by his grand- 
father. When the original revolution took place, 
the factories were in excellent working order; the 
people were reasonably treated, and out of their 
earnings managed to maintain an existence in decency 
and comparative comfort. To-day, after four years' 
control by the Communists, the factories that were 
prosperous are falling to pieces and the machinery 
is rotting with rust. A business which has taken 
three generations of individual effort to build up has 
been destroyed by the Communists in three years. 

This is a very serious matter for Russia, but, being 
agricultural rather than industrial, her people can, 
with some facility, turn their hands to occupations 
which will at least bring them bread. In Britain, 
the similar destruction of industry would have far 
more serious consequences. Even if the people were 



COMMUNISM 16? 

able to turn themselves to the land, the land is not 
there in sufficient quantities. They must, therefore, 
trade, or emigrate, or die. 

In this Elysium of the Communists, there are 
millions of secret police, public and private inform- 
ers, functionaries and State officials, who have to 
be paid or supported by the men who work on the 
land or in the factories. The peasant does not sell 
his produce; it is taken by force, and he is given in 
return paper money of such little value that he does 
not trouble to count it; he weighs it, and tells you 
its value in pounds avoirdupois, instead of pounds 
sterling. 

The term Communist, as applied to the present 
governors of Russia, hardly conveys to British 
minds correct impressions of the characters of the 
men who have driven that unhappy country through 
the revolutionary flames. There is no comparison 
between their present and immediately past prac- 
tices and the ideal conceptions attributed to them. 
Terrorist is the more apposite phrase than Commu- 
nist. At once they are the slaves of their own mad 
passions and of theorists that are impossible and 
untenable. They have arrogated to themselves the 
right to govern consequences and to dictate to all 
men, even in matters of life and death. They claim 
to be the progenitors of the perfect State and advo- 
cates of the world's peace, yet they have organised 
cosmopolitan armies and used these armies to spread 
by force the doctrines of destruction. 

Many there are, indeed, who had no desire for 



168 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

the perpetuation of the excesses which have horri- 
fied the world. They would have stopped short of 
the grosser outrages, if not from motives of human- 
ity, at least from motives of policy. They made, 
however, the mistake that all revolutionaries make ; 
they forgot that it is easier to create a terrestrial 
hell than it is to limit its area or to control its activi- 
ties. Murder and rapine did, in fact, become too 
ghastly for the Slav, and his terrorist directors were 
therefore constrained to employ the blackguards 
from other countries. 

Russia herself offers too limited a field for the 
activities of her particular brand of Communist, and 
many of them have avowed their intention to spread 
their terror over all the earth. 

The theory of Communism is not new. It has 
been enunciated many times, and under many cir- 
cumstances, and always it has been found wanting. 
It fails as all similar "isms" fail because it proceeds 
on the assumption that all men are equal, and that 
all will give of their best without thought of par- 
ticular reward. It fails because it refuses to recog- 
nise that what is possible in the infancy of nations is 
impossible when their adolescent period has been 
passed. It fails because a theory and its application 
has never been the same where men were the solvent. 

It may sound nice to say from the platform that 
one is happy in being called a Communist. It would 
be equally wise to say that one was happy in never 
having read history, in being ignorant of economics, 
and in denying the existence of human fallibility. 



COMMUNISM 169 

Recently I met three distinguished Russians. All 
of them were Socialists, and all of them were co- 
operators. One had been concerned with the first 
revolution. Of that I am certain. Perhaps the 
other two were also concerned, because both were 
heads of the Zemstvo of the districts in which they 
resided, and it is notorious that the Zemstvo first 
made the Russian revolution possible. They came 
to this country to plead for consideration, not as 
politicians understanding the intricacies of interna- 
tional politics, but as representative workers who 
were in danger of having their throats cut if the 
extremists in the British Labour movement were 
enabled to continue their support of the Bolsheviki. 
Each one told the story of his district, of the sup- 
pression of every democratic right, of the exacting 
and exploitation, and of the deportation of their 
food and their young women. 

One of them, a quiet, gentlemanly fellow, with 
the blue eyes and the flaxen hair of the Scandinavian, 
said that, having finished his mission in this country, 
having endeavoured to explain to Englishmen the 
real facts of the situation, he would return, knowing 
that on his return the only thing open to him would 
be to take a rifle and defend himself and his wife 
and his children until death made defence no longer 
possible or necessary. 

It was necessary to explain to these men that the 
bulk of Britishers were neither cowards nor men 
to whom the practice of dishonouring their obliga- 
tions was usual; that a minority, for political rea- 



170 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

sons, and without understanding, had misrepresented 
the Briton. They were informed that financial rea- 
sons and the vastness of Russia had forced the 
Government into pursuing courses which were for- 
eign to the temperament of the majority of the peo- 
ple in Britain. They found it difficult to believe this. 
The only thing they could think of was the insecurity 
of life and property, and the horrors heaped upon 
their people by men who were just as anxious to 
destroy democracy as they were anxious to destroy 
capital. 

In this country we have apostles of Communism 
who are temperamentally just as narrow and bigoted 
as Lenin. They do not possess his ability, but they 
possess a terrible capacity for diverting the Govern- 
ment from fixed policies. They have imperfectly 
defined, but frequently expressed objectives. Revo- 
lution is what they preach, but they are not agreed 
as to which kind of revolution would suit their sev- 
eral ambitions, nor can they realise their inability 
to control a revolution and to cut it off at the 
moment when, from their point of view, they con- 
sider it has been effective; nor do they realise the 
difference between irresponsible agitation and re- 
sponsible construction. Unhappily for the rest of us, 
they were able, in the early days of the war, to 
frighten the Government, and they have managed to 
keep up this sense of fear even until to-day. 

It is fear which has paralysed the Government on 
profoundly important occasions. It is this fear 
which has led the Government to refuse the gauntlet 



COMMUNISM 171 

thrown into the arena by men who wish to precipi- 
tate anarchy. It is this fear which has created a 
situation difficult for the Government, or for any 
Government, to control, even if it were much 
stronger than the one which at the moment presides 
over the destinies of the British Commonwealth. 

Most of us are praying that the Government will 
either overcome its fears or resign its position. 
Anything, especially in the affairs of a nation, is 
better than indefiniteness and indecision. Oscillation 
is no substitute for inspiration. 

There is, of course, an assumption in Britain that 
the Britisher would never descend to the beastliness 
and the brutality which has characterised the vary- 
ing phases of the Lenin dictatorship. Those who 
hold this view have no grounds of complaint if 
others doubt the wisdom of their conclusions after 
reading the reports of the revolutionary outbreaks 
in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston rightly claims to 
be amongst the most cultured and intelligent of 
American cities. Its standard of municipal patriot- 
ism and social purity impresses the Englishman who 
visits the city, and yet, within a few hours of the 
commencement of its police strike, millions of dollars 
worth of property had been looted, and women and 
girls were being molested in the streets. Our own 
experiences in Liverpool prevent the development 
of any sense of smug superiority. Our crowds were 
as bad as the Boston crowds, and would have been 
worse had it not been for the fear that the presence 
of troops engendered. 



172 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Civilisation is a long time effecting radical changes 
in the hearts of men. It places a polish upon their 
utterances and their actions, but it leaves them only 
a little removed from those races which are said to 
be uncivilised. Once the veneer is dissolved, and 
the polish disturbed, elemental instincts dominate. 
So we, unless a new spirit arises amongst the people 
and in the Government, may find ourselves guilty of 
crimes and outrages similar to those which have dis- 
graced the cause of Labour in Russia. 

Britain, indeed, has nothing to hope for from any 
form of Communism or revolution. By sacrificing 
her genius for evolutionary politics she gains nothing 
and loses everything. 

Following a bad example is foolish at any time, 
but when the badness is obvious, and the leaders are 
decamping or recanting, it is truly idiotic. For some 
time the speeches of Lenin have indicated doubt. 
To-day, his writ no longer runs throughout Russia. 
Government by terror implies the possession of suffi- 
cient instruments. The Soviet Government no 
longer has the necessary men or the revolvers to 
overawe the real Russia. It has sought and is seek- 
ing association with the capitalists it derided. It 
may be clever enough to change its coat in time, but 
it will have to hurry, for the new Russia which is 
emerging from the tribulation of the past seven 
years knows how futile Communism is, and how 
horribly its exponents have scarified her moral, social 
and intellectual life. 

It will be interesting and instructive to watch the 



COMMUNISM 173 

re-association of the scattered fragments of Russian 
life and policy. The new progress promises to be 
evolutionary rather than revolutionary. For all the 
affairs of life — self-protection, self-education, main- 
tenance, transport, and development — first individu- 
als, then hamlets, then villages will associate and 
federate. Then larger and larger groups will 
coalesce until once more Russia will stand regenerate 
before the world. 

While all this gathering together of orderly forces 
is taking place in the home of the Slav, the Briton 
is being harried and bullied into situations which 
must involve him in tragedy more terrible than that 
enacted in Russia. He is being urged to sacrifice 
country to Communism; to take up the dice the 
Russian is discarding, and to put to the hazard his 
own and his children's inheritance. Is he fool 
enough to do it? 

Not if he remembers that Communism has neither 
the backing of history, the force of logic, nor the 
prestige which comes from successful achievement. 



CHAPTER XV 

CO-PARTNERSHIP 

ANOTHER question which must be considered 
by organised Labour during the next few 
years is that of productive method; whether this 
shall continue on purely individualistic lines or 
whether Labour will accept some form of co-part- 
nership. 

Personally, I approach the question of co-part- 
nership in the spirit of an inquirer who at present 
is without definite conviction; who does not know 
whether to regard co-partnership as an interesting 
cult or as a practicable solution of industrial diffi- 
culties. The tenor of what I write must, therefore, 
be interrogative rather than dogmatic. It will, 
indeed, be gratifying to succeed even to the extent 
of clearing my own mental conceptions of the 
subject. 

Years ago, an old student colleague advised me, 
when in doubt, to apply to myself, or to my subject, 
what he called the Socratic method. As far as I 
have been able to understand the Socratic method, 
it consists in asking questions, mostly inconvenient, 
sometimes impertinent, but often exceedingly useful. 

Recently, I have been asking myself and other 
people many questions concerning the present state 

174 



CO-PARTNERSHIP 175 

of things, and the possibility of co-partnership meet- 
ing the situation. 

It would be easy to write extolling the ideals of 
co-partnership; to paint word-pictures of a world 
from which selfishness and ignorance had been elimi- 
nated, and in which social altruism and contentment 
reigned. It would be easy to do this, and very fool- 
ish to do it if such a line of thought minimised the 
importance of securing satisfactory answers to the 
questions which so many are asking. 

Why are we to-day discussing seriously and more 
generally than before, departures from the existing 
order of things? Has the system of training, prac- 
tised through so many centuries, ceased to meet our 
requirements? Is it the system that has failed, or 
the human operators of the system? 

The immediate and popular answer to such a 
question would undoubtedly be that the system has 
failed, or is failing, to meet present-day develop- 
ments. On every hand, one finds men and women 
of widely differing types, different attainments, and 
different social standing, condemning the system and 
demanding the substitution of some other method 
of dealing with production and of remunerating and 
of creating an interest in Labour. That most people 
are adopting this attitude as a matter of fashion, 
rather than of reasoned conviction, does not alter 
the fact; nor does it remove the necessity for fairly 
and squarely facing the pros and cons of alternative 
schemes. 

The campaign for nationalisation has, for the time 



176 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

being, failed; not because its advocates were idle 
or inarticulate, but because of the almost universal 
revulsion against the costs and restraints of govern- 
ment by bureaucracy. Profit-sharing has had partial 
successes; but it fails to meet the modern demand 
for participation in control. Will co-partnership 
meet the situation? If we secure its general intro- 
duction, are we to regard it as an amelioration or as 
a panacea? Will it patch up, or will it solve all our 
industrial problems? What do we really mean by 
co-partnership, and what industrial areas do we 
expect it to cover? 

Definitions are said to be the most dangerous 
things that man can attempt. Having neither 
prejudices against, nor violent predilections in 
favour, I might be permitted to say that co-partner- 
ship involves an association of all the factors essen- 
tial to production, and implies the intention of co- 
partners to share the advantages, the disadvantages, 
and the responsibility of any business adventure. 

It is, perhaps, necessary to explain that simple 
profit-sharing involves neither the sharing of losses 
nor the sharing of control. It is also necessary, in 
order to avoid future disillusionment, to explain 
that co-partnership is not a substitute for work. 
Whether we continue under the existing system, or 
adopt co-partnership, or accept nationalisation, we 
shall still eat bread by the sweat of our brow. If 
co-partnership involves association of the factors 
necessary to production, it is important that we 
should determine, in our own minds, what these 



CO-PARTNERSHIP 177 

factors are, and to what extent it is possible to bring 
about a working coalition. 

It is obvious that, in the broadest sense, Capital 
and Labour supply all that is essential. I put Capital 
first, not out of any disrespect to Labour, but be- 
cause I regard Capital as wealth which is both 
indigenous and accumulated; something, in fact, 
which nature provides or man saves. The part that 
nature provides is there (though not all of us always 
acknowledge the fact), before man either acts or 
saves. Quite apart, then, from alphabetical order 
or euphony, it is permissible to put Capital first, 
because it is nature's way. 

Mankind ought really to have no quarrel with 
Capital. Without it, the world would be a sorry 
place for its existing populations. Capital is not 
merely the stock of money held by individuals to 
carry on the world's business. Money is only the 
liquid — and, under existing rates of taxation, the 
diminishing — part of Capital. Capital is really 
everything non-human which enters into the scheme 
of production in the effort to maintain existence. It 
is natural resources, as well as factories, machines, 
railways, mines, and ships. Labour itself is at once 
potential and highly perishable capital. 

The looseness with which the term Labour is used 
is responsible for much of the misconception and 
unrest that exists. On the platform and in the 
Press, the term is usually applied exclusively to 
manual labour. The definition I recently prepared 
for the compilers of the Annals of the American 



1T8 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

Academy of Political and Social Science, expresses 
my own conception: — 

"Labour is that inventive, initiative, construc- 
tive, and manipulative capacity which, applied to 
materials, conditions and requirements, extracts 
and makes and distributes those things which are 
essential to human existence, enlightenment and 
happiness." 

Such a definition may be imperfect, but it takes 
cognisance of the inventive labour of a Watts or an 
Edison, and the efforts of those who conceive busi- 
ness, provide capital, organise manipulative and 
technical personnel, and exploit markets. It recog- 
nises manual labour, both skilled and unskilled, 
whether it is employed in fashioning materials or 
in distributing them. It does not ignore the possi- 
bility of extending credit to that political effort 
which keeps open, or should keep open, international 
highways and opportunities. 

This conception of Labour immediately challenges 
many popularly accepted theories. It also invites 
comparisons as to values and remunerations. Should 
each factor in the scheme of production be treated 
equally? If there is differentiation in whose favour 
should it operate? Should the inventor, the capi- 
talist, the organiser, or the manual worker have 
preference? Each will answer these questions ac- 
cording to his understanding and his circumstances. 
To me, it seems just that the manual worker should 
be favourably placed; that his share of the profits 



CO-PARTNERSHIP 179 

of industry should be generous and assured, and that 
his social obligations to his family and his fellows 
should be recognised when the share is determined. 

There is one eternal and immutable stipulation. 
He must produce value in return for the value he 
receives. Whether his share is paid in wages or in 
goods, is immaterial to this question. He must 
replace this share by producing what will balance 
his personal account, replace waste, provide reserves, 
and maintain the State. 

Will it be possible for any scheme of co-partner- 
ship that is in existence, or that can be designed, 
to bring these material and human factors into a 
relationship which is at once more productive and 
more harmonious than that which is now in exist- 
ence? 

I have never accepted the assertion that Capital 
and Labour are essentially antagonistic. If it were 
possible to get away from the narrow conception 
which each has of the other, and bring them more 
closely into understanding and relationship, under 
a system which permitted them not only to share 
profits, but to share losses and responsibilities, the 
advantages would be enormous. These advantages 
would accrue, not only to the men who own capital 
and the men who work materials, but to that more 
important entity, the whole community. 

For many years, the desire to promote understand- 
ing has been exceedingly strong with me, and I have 
taken every possible opportunity to bring men and 
employers together for the purpose of settling the 



180 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

differences wl instantly arise between them and 

for the further purpose of discussing those methods 
of production which appear to press upon the com- 
fort and health of the worker, or appear to him to 
be wasteful and unnecessary. Usually, these con- 
ferences have benefited the employer much more 
than they have benefited the men. He has discov- 
ered intelligence, and frequently interest in the busi- 
ness, and he has been able to make profits out of his 
discoveries. 

If any arrangement 
led the workman also to secure additional profit 
through his intelligence and his interest in the busi- 
ness, such an arrangement ought obviously to make 
for less waste 2nd increase of production. 

With me, howeve the g latest difficulty has 
always been in determining where these forms of 
co-partnership could rerin. Up to the present, the 
workman is mainly concerned with wages, hours 
and working conditions. Only in rare instances do 
his thoughts travel backwards to the inception of 
the business, the provision of capital, the erection 
of premises, the provision of machinery, the gather- 
ing together of personnel or the discovery and re- 
tention of markets. Nor Joes he often think of the 
need for extension, for changes, not only in methods 
of production, but in the character of the articles 
produced. Nor would he agree with his 

employer as to the amount of profits to be set aside 
each year in order to provide adequate reserves. 
In the re of things, he lives largely in the pres- 



CO-PARTNERSHIP 181 

ent; and, this being the case, it seems inevitable that 
the area of co-partnership schemes shall be, for the 
present, limited to what may be termed the manipu- 
lative side of industry; expansion coming after 
experience and confidence have been gained. 

If I am asked whether I think an association of 
employers and workmen on these limited lines 
desirable, I unhesitatingly say, "Yes." Whether the 
adventure, as such, succeeded or failed it would have 
educative results; and workmen, at least, would 
learn from experience which of the systems best 
suited their own conditions. In this sense, I believe 
that experiments are essential. 

The temperament of the Britisher inclines him 
to look to experience rather than to reasoning; and, 
once involved in the difficulties and anxieties of 
management, he must become a better-balanced indi- 
vidual. 

There are many difficulties ahead of co-partner- 
ship schemes. Quite apart from the human, and 
common, disinclination to accept responsibility, there 
is the distinct opposition of the Socialists, who 
believe that co-partnership is palliation, and that it 
postpones the introduction of the political millen- 
nium. There is also the definite opposition of the 
Trade Unionist, who believes that as the interests 
of the worker in the business are strengthened, his 
interests in the Trade Union are weakened. 

With the objection of the Socialists I am not 
concerned; but, naturally, I do sympathise with the 
point of view of the Trade Union official, who sees 



182 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

in the general adoption of co-partnership, the gen- 
eral disintegration of the movement he and his 
prototypes have built up. I sympathise with his 
fears, but do not think they should stand in the way 
of any change which advances the common good. 
Trade Unionism, like any other institution, must 
face the test of utility. It has been an important 
factor in the affairs of men for more than 200 years. 
Even when it was incipient, it was important. It has 
done more than any other force to advance the 
interests of men who work for wages. Its successes 
cannot be measured by the direct results in England 
and America. The effect of its activities has been 
felt, and its influence has improved conditions, even 
in countries where no actual Trade Union organisa- 
tion exists. It has achieved many things, but it may 
not have achieved permanence. It is possible that, 
in the changes that are inevitable, it will be affected 
or even superseded. 

It is always good for institutions, as well as for 
men, to remember that the world existed without 
them, and may continue to exist even though they 
pass away. It would be foolish, therefore, for the 
officials of the Trade Union movement to oppose 
the introduction of co-partnership. It would be part 
of their duty 7 to overlook all efforts in this direction, 
and to see that they produced results at least as 
beneficial to the workers as the old system produces. 
If they look at the position broadly, they will cease 
opposition to anything which promises improvement. 
If they look at the movement for co-partnership 



CO-PARTNERSHIP 183 

wisely, they will seek to control it rather than to 
destroy it. 

There is the equally important opposition of 
capital. It will say, and say rightly, that at present, 
and for a long time to come, it will be quite impos- 
sible for the partnership to be complete; that labour, 
in the nature of things, cannot come in at the begin- 
ning; that the scheme of the business must inevitably 
be formed before the manual workers are even 
gathered together. They will fear the workman's 
interference in plans that he does not understand, 
and they will grudge the time required to explain 
why certain things were done and why certain things 
must be done if the business is to succeed. They 
will point, not to the few successes that co-partner- 
ship has achieved, but to the many failures that are 
recorded; and they will tell you that one of the 
essential factors in the successful management of a 
business is rapidity of decision and action, and that 
these are impossible if too many interests are to be 
considered and conciliated before action is taken. 

There is also the workmen's objection to co- 
partnership. I have seen offers of it rejected without 
examination, and I doubt whether the great ma- 
jority of the workers have ever given it serious 
consideration at all, or really desire to be troubled 
about it. 

In spite of objections and apathy, there does not 
appear, at the moment, any alternative to the pres- 
ent system which offers so much promise as co- 
partnership, dealing, as it could, with individual 



184 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

businesses involving equal responsibilities, and 
arranging, in joint conference, terms between those 
who provide and create and those who manipulate 
and distribute. 

Some day it may be possible to pass from the 
individual business and operate the industry on 
similar lines, but that is a problem of co-operation 
for another generation. 



CHAPTER XVI 
TRADE AND TAXES 

TO-DAY, manufacturers find themselves with 
depleted resources, with closed or reluctant 
markets, and with stocks that have been accumulated 
while costs of production have been abnormally 
high. Behind these stocks are debts to the banks; 
and the fact that stocks must, in large proportions, 
be disposed of in markets over which the merchants 
have no effective control, that is, control which 
enables them to force prices higher than the prices 
of competitors, or in excess of the buyers' concep- 
tions of economic value. Manufacturers are being 
urged, particularly by people who only manufacture 
words and programmes, to cut their losses ; that is, 
of course, to forgo their estimated profits, and per- 
haps to entrench upon their reserves by selling goods 
at less than the cost of the raw material used, plus 
the wages of production. They may do this as a 
matter of policy, or at the dread command of the 
Official Receiver, but in either case, the aggregate 
standard of commercial stability will be injured and 
the common standards of comfort will be threatened. 
Whatever the manufacturer may think of the 
advice to sell, regardless of productive cost, he can- 
not escape the problems of how to get rid of stocks; 

185 



186 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

how to repay loans guaranteed by stocks that have 
lost value; how to replace stocks at lower produc- 
tive cost; how to ensure effective distribution of new 
stocks after these have been manufactured. 

The first two problems are closely related. Upon 
success in selling stocks depends ability to repay 
loans. The manufacturer who sells in a falling mar- 
ket must, of necessity, weaken the sum total of his 
credit, and so handicap his future operations. The 
community cannot afford to regard the failure of any 
manufacturer as an unimportant matter, and as 
manufacturers are being asked to help the people by 
providing employment, the manufacturer is, in re- 
turn, entitled to ask the people to help him by pro- 
viding reserves of credit, and, wherever possible, by 
reducing the enormous burden of taxation. 

It is necessary to speak with the greatest diffi- 
dence of all credit schemes. The subject is difficult 
and complex, and its ramifications extend far beyond 
the confines of Britain. It is governed by factors 
that the average man seldom considers or under- 
stands. Perhaps the only people who treat credit 
lightly are those who never had any. 

Any national credit scheme, to be successful, 
should be financed by the people, guaranteed by the 
State, and administered by business experts. There 
is every justification for demanding that credit to 
overseas markets should be in the shape of goods 
manufactured in Britain. Advancing cash to the 
Governments of impecunious States will encourage 
extravagance rather than trade. Governments of 



TRADE AND TAXES 187 

countries receiving material credits must be asked 
to guarantee repayment, and to facilitate the collec- 
tion of sums owing. Credit Bonds might be issued 
to the public in similar fashion to the issue of War 
Savings Certificates, and they could be redeemed 
gradually as overseas debts are paid and commercial 
situations improve. 

Apart from getting rid of existing stocks, is the 
need for replacing them at lower productive costs. 
The main costing factors are raw materials, labour, 
profit, rates of interest, mechanical power, transport, 
rates and taxes. 

Imported raw materials are already coming in at 
lower prices. Cotton is a startling example. Labour 
will certainly become cheaper, if not in terms of 
nominal wages, at least in terms of greater efficiency. 
The amount given to labour is of less importance 
than the return given by labour. It matters little 
what labour receives, provided labour returns, not 
merely value, but that surplus necessary to develop 
the business, maintain the State, and provide for con- 
tingencies. Labour, whether of hand or brain, 
whether directive or manipulative, must earn its corn 
or starve. 

Profits, not only on goods in stock, but on goods 
to be manufactured, must be smaller than the past 
five years' experiences have led men to expect. 
Speaking generally, it is safe to say that stocks de- 
teriorate by holding, if not intrinsically, at least in 
the sense that interest is paid or lost on the capital 



188 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

locked up in stock; consequently, holding on for 
profit may result in actual and grave losses. 

The tendency to-day is for men to expect com- 
petences after a very few years of work and effort. 
They will have to modify their expectations. A 
hundred years ago my great-grandfather made bricks 
by hand and sold these bricks at 22/- per thousand. 
It is said that manufacturers to-day expect a similar 
sum as profit! Reductions in profit must precede 
reductions in wages. It will be useless to ask the 
workmen to accept lower wages if manufacturers 
continue their attempts to exact war-time profits. 

The importance of internally derived and ex- 
ploited mechanical power has been forced upon the 
business community by the war and post-war attitude 
of the miners. For two hundred years coal has been 
the main source of the power behind British indus- 
try, and the price and availability of coal is a mat- 
ter of grave concern to everyone connected with 
trade and commerce. It takes three tons of coal, 
or coal product, to make one ton of tin plate, while 
£1 per ton off coal means £4 per ton off steel. There 
is no secret about the American and Belgian and 
German capacity for underselling Britain in these 
and similar products. They have cheaper coal and 
more effective labour. 

Transport, particularly for a nation which must 
sell overseas, affects all selling prices. Freightage 
of wood went up 775 per cent; railways, in 1913, 
received an income of £135,000,000. In 19 19 their 
income had risen to £318,000,000, and as there was 



TRADE AND TAXES 189 

a deficit of £36,000,000 which the State has guaran- 
teed, railways have taken a grand, if not a glorious, 
total of £354,000,000 out of the British traveller 
and trader, or £219,000,000 in excess of what they 
took in 19 13. It would be interesting for those who 
are accountants or experts at figures to work out the 
percentage which this gigantic sum adds to the dis- 
tributive costs of British commerce, and the extent 
to which it affects unemployment. 

Before the war we had one great trade competi- 
tor. Germany went to war for markets rather 
than for the Hohenzollerns. To-day, two other 
competitors have entered the industrial and com- 
mercial struggle. America and Japan have been 
our Allies. In commercial and industrial rivalry 
they are as much against us as Germany. Whatever 
may be our expectations, we shall, in fact, receive 
no quarter. America has already indicated her inten- 
tions. She promises to play fairly, but she will play 
hardly, and in her own interests. 

What has the Council of Action to say to these 
three capable and forceful rivals? Will they be told 
to abolish overtime, to restrict peremptorily the 
working hours to eight per day, and to restrict also 
the output of those who remain at work? 

Nothing of the kind. The Council of Action, and 
the others, will reiterate frequently exploded plati- 
tudes and rejoice anew over the passing of vain 
resolutions. 

War, and post-war taxation, has also handicapped 
industry and closed down factories. In considering 



190 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

taxation, it is desirable to include both the Imperial 
and local forms. It is necessary, also, to consider 
the purpose for which taxation is imposed. It is 
usually: 

(a) To provide the income necessary to meet 
national and local charges; 

(b) To prevent the importation of goods 
which interfere with home industries; 

(c) To lessen the consumption of the less 
essential commodities. 



The statesman has to consider, also, whether all 
taxation imposed is necessary; whether its incidence 
is wisely distributed, and whether it limits enter- 
prise. The latter consideration is most important 
to those who are dealing with employment. 

In studying the effect of taxation on the business 
of a country, and through business, or lack of it, on 
unemployment, it is necessary to ask: 

(a) Has taxation reached the pitch at which 
it limits enterprise? 

(b) Has capital been handicapped to the 
extent of forcing it to seek non-speculative invest- 
ment — i.e. Government Loans — which are non- 
productive as well as non-speculative ? 

(c) Has the Government, by absorbing liquid 
capital and placing it at the disposal of its own 
spending Departments, limited the amount avail- 
able for trade and wages, and so created unem- 
ployment and loss of productive capacity? 

(d) Has it, by excessive taxation, limited the 
liquid capital on the money market, and, to the 



TRADE AND TAXES 191 

extent of this limitation, increased rates of inter- 
est and the export prices of commodities? 

Whatever the Government may say, the man in 
the street will answer all the foregoing questions in 
the affirmative. 

Taxation in Mr. Gladstone's time was £100,000,- 
000 per annum; the estimated expenditure for 
national purposes in 1920-21, exclusive of rates, 
was the astounding sum of £1,418,300,000. To this 
terrifying total must now be added local rates vary- 
ing from 10/- to 27/- in the pound. 

It may be asserted that, in face of the unavoid- 
able expenditure forced upon the country by the war, 
the whole of this taxation becomes necessary. It is, 
however, permissible to doubt the assertion, and to 
argue that less waste during the war, and a more 
effective cutting down after the war, of Departments 
that have no use in peace time, would have rendered 
much of the taxation unnecessary. 

Money was literally thrown away on enterprises 
that were extravagantly designed, and constructed 
on a system of payments that invited dishonesty. 
To pay contractors a percentage on what they spent 
was to invite extravagant spending. Henrowe and 
Chepstow, as well as Slough, offer outstanding 
examples. It is alleged that every brick in the for- 
mer place cost a shilling to lay; while at Chepstow, 
one of the men who knew something about ships, 
and who had for years been building ships in the 
locality, complained pitifully of being made subor- 



192 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

dinate to official shipbuilders who "wore brass hats 
and spurs." 

The country has suffered, is suffering, and will 
suffer, because of the unhappy passion for creating 
new Departments to meet each emergency. That 
this passion did not immediately abate after the war, 
was shown by the creation of a Ministry of Mines, 
and the appointment, in connection with the Minis- 
try, of 397 new officials. That for five years 
Departments of doubtful utility overlapped or trod 
on each other's heels, counts for little in the eyes 
of the Minister who desires to accomplish great 
things and leave a great name as a Departmental 
Chief. The effect upon the pockets of the commu- 
nity of these Departments, stated in terms of cash, 
was shown by the 1920-21 demand for £497,318,000 
for Civil Services. 

The people of Britain, and the trade of Britain, 
will have to pay these charges, and the people will 
be justified in deciding that not another penny of 
new taxation shall be imposed, but that existing 
expenses shall be curtailed, and all other projects 
which involve the spending of money shall be post- 
poned. 

Whatever the sum total of taxes, the people have 
to consider the fairness or unfairness with which 
they are imposed. As all classes in democracy 
share the responsibility and the burdens of expendi- 
ture, it is unfair for any class to escape its due pro- 
portion, or to receive from taxes what it ought to 
earn by work. 



TRADE AND TAXES 193 

There has been an impression that the raising of 
the Income Tax exemption limit from £160 to £225 
has benefited the manual worker and the people 
who receive comparatively small salaries. It is, 
however, very doubtful whether this impression is 
justified. What the workers have escaped in direct 
taxation, they are being compelled to pay in indirect 
taxation, and to suffer through the dissipation of 
liquid surplus and the discouragement of creative 
initiative. The evil effect on productivity is aggra- 
vated rather than minimised by the attempt to place 
all obvious taxation upon the rich or potentially 
rich. 

Excessive taxation, even when it appears to be 
borne by the rich, does most injuriously affect the 
poor, because it prevents or retards the accumula- 
tion of that surplus which is needed for industrial 
maintenance and expansion. Unless such surplus is 
accumulated, there must be business reaction and 
stagnation. While this may be postponed by bor- 
rowing at high rates of interest, it cannot be defi- 
nitely avoided. A business, too, which has main- 
tained existence for any appreciable period on capital 
borrowed at high rates of interest may take a long 
time to effect tangible recuperation, and may be 
expected to provide, during its period of recupera- 
tion, small dividends and low wages. The difficulty 
of providing requisite surplus is greater to-day than 
before the war, because, owing to the rise in prices 
of materials and in wages, much more capital is 



194 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

needed to work a business than was formerly the 
case. 

The cost of everything we eat, or drink, or use, 
or wear, is increased by excessive taxation, and this 
increase affects every commodity, taxed or otherwise. 
The result of this is decreased national spending 
power, which throws out of work men who provide 
for the home market, and decreased power to export 
at competitive prices, which prevents that outside 
expansion which alone can provide steady and remu- 
nerative employment for all our population. 

Taxes, it should always be remembered, are cash 
transactions. It is not permissible to meet them by 
Bills of Exchange drawn at twelve months; nor is 
it permissible to postpone payment for any length of 
time. Business, in the main, is a credit affair; and 
the business man who has to meet heavy taxation, 
and particularly unexpected taxation, must budget 
for considerably more than the tax-collector de- 
mands. If he only adds to the price of his commodi- 
ties the exact amount of the tax, he will certainly find 
that he has not enough to meet the demands made 
upon him. If he has to pay 20 per cent, taxes, he 
will, in all probability, put 40 per cent, on his prices, 
to be sure of raising the cash, and of indemnifying 
himself against the possible losses of credit trade. 

New developments in trade are restricted w T hen 
the Government absorbs too much in taxes. Britain 
depends for her existence mainly on overseas trade. 
This is a fact that cannot be too often reiterated, 
even though one becomes weary of the process. The 



TRADE AND TAXES 195 

business man will only face the risks of overseas 
enterprise if he sees the possibility of successful com- 
petition with other nations at a reasonable profit. 

The attempt to accomplish, in a decade, the social 
and political ambitions of a century, would have been 
costly had the circumstances been favourable, and 
had every man placed in office and authority been a 
perfect instrument. 

Unfortunately, the circumstances were not favour- 
able to a successful exploitation of the theories 
advanced, and ill-considered and unco-ordinated 
interferences have further denuded the war-im- 
poverished resources of Britain. 

The average man does not believe that this is 
so. His impression that there is still plenty of money 
in the country is, unhappily, encouraged by the 
criminally foolish utterances of those who profess 
to lead. 

At one of the industrial conferences, such a leader 
(and a very well-known one) declared that they 
wanted a good "Friday night," whether they worked 
or whether they played. He emphasised his de- 
mands by saying that before the war, the banks had 
in reserve thirteen thousand millions, while now they 
held seventeen thousand millions. 

"The worker wants some of this increased 
wealth," he cried, and he quite failed to appreciate 
the incongruity of his utterances when, later in the 
same speech, he was assuring his audience that the 
sovereign was now only worth seven shilling and six- 
pence ! 



196 WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE 

That the nation is short of liquid capital is proved 
by some recent failures, in which the assets greatly 
exceeded the liabilities of the concerns affected. But 
the assets were bricks and mortar, and machinery 
and goodwill, and these could not be used to buy 
raw materials, or to pay the wages of labour. 

It is often argued that the banks are emphasising 
the shortage of liquid capital by their refusal to 
advance money for speculative purposes. It should 
never be forgotten, however, that the banks are cus- 
todians of other people's money, and are not sup- 
posed to enter into speculative enterprises unless 
the security offered amply safeguards the interests 
of the people whose money they hold. That the 
banks are justified in exercising care is demonstrated 
by the recent unhappy occurrences in connection with 
Farrow's Bank. 

Those who are almost daily advocating inoppor- 
tune, and sometimes ill-considered, legislation, and 
who only see social salvation in the imposition of 
levies on already dangerously depleted capitals, sel- 
dom seem to realise how much their advocacy dam- 
ages trading possibilities, and develops the circum- 
stances which make for unemployment. This advo- 
cacy of theirs goes counter to the real desires of 
those on whose behalf they claim to speak. What 
the genuinely unemployed workers of Britain need 
is not a Government which satisfies, or attempts to 
satisfy, the demands of the unthinking by borrowing, 
or wasting the national substance in bureaucratic 
experiments; they need a Government which will 



TRADE AND TAXES 197 

keep its expenditure well within the capacity of its 
people, and which will have the courage to cut out 
things, however desirable in themselves, if these can- 
not be paid for without increasing the handicap of 
trade.. 



THE END 



